10 Actors Who Confirmed They Were Almost Batman

by Danny Meegan

1. Nicholas Hoult - The Batman

Tolkein Nicholas Hoult
Fox Searchlight

In early 2019 - after it was confirmed that Ben Affleck would be stepping down as Batman - the entire film fan community turned its attention to that all-important question: who will don the famous costume next?

At the time, we knew that Matt Reeves - director of the upcoming Batman film - was seeking a younger actor to play the part, and in May 2019, we learned that he'd selected Twilight's Robert Pattinson as the next Dark Knight. But, as is always the case with these things, there were other names in the mix too.

And one of those names was Nicholas Hoult, who is most familiar to audiences for his role as Beast in Fox's X-Men prequel films. Hoult, reportedly, was in the running for the Batman role alongside Pattinson, and the two actors were neck-and-neck for the vast majority of the casting process.

He even got to wear a Batsuit too, with Reeves trying to gauge who would be the best fit for his take on the source material. Clearly, Hoult came ridiculously close to scoring the part, but after Reeves and Warner Bros. deliberated for a few days, they decided that Pattinson was their guy.

Annoyingly for Hoult, he's also lost his role in the X-Men movies too, considering the high likelihood that the series will be rebooted under Disney. 2019 really wasn't a good year for him.

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If you could see just one of these actors appear as Batman, who would it be? Let us know your choice in the comments section below!

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!