10 Actors Who Confirmed They Were Almost Batman

7. Joaquin Phoenix - Batman: Year One

Freddie Prinze Jr Batman The Dark Knight
Warner Bros.

Unlike the actors in the previous entries, Joaquin Phoenix lost out on playing Batman in a movie that was never actually made.

After the failure of Batman & Robin in 1997, Batman's big screen adventures went quiet while Warner Bros. figured out what to do with the character next. Eventually, they settled on Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins - more on that later - but at one point, they were considering letting Darren Aronofsky make a movie based on acclaimed comic-book story arc Batman: Year One.

And if this movie had gone ahead, Aronofsky wanted Joaquin Phoenix to be his Batman. Yep - the same Joaquin Phoenix who just won an Oscar for playing the Joker.

Unfortunately, the project fell apart when Aronofsky realized that the studio didn't share his vision, because, as we recently learned, they wanted someone completely different to play the title role...

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for almost nine years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. He has been writing and video editing for 10+ years, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers and uploading them to YouTube (they're admittedly a bit rusty by today's standards). If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order or to tell you about the making of 1988's Remembrance of the Daleks, Danny is the person to ask.