Raise your hand if you're excited about The Batman.
To say the 2022 reboot of the franchise has been hotly anticipated would be the understatement of the year — and director Matt Reeves is just as excited for you to see it as he was for it to be made.
The dark action-adventure flick — which just dropped its second trailer yesterday, FYI — is set to follow the Defender of Gotham at the beginning of his journey with vigilantism. And because it's one of the earliest takes on the DC Comics antihero in the entire franchise, Matt was originally fearful that Robert Pattinson wouldn't agree to the project.
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"I really did think, 'Oh my god, this version of this character, this guy who sort of almost like — if you think of Bruce Wayne as like a reckless rock star in a decaying manner — there's this part of me that saw you as that, and I had no idea that you [Robert] would be interested in playing the role at all," the filmmaker said at a virtual panel for DC FanDome yesterday, per ComicBook.com.
"And I thought, What if Rob doesn't want to play Batman? This will be a disaster," he continued, laughing. "And then it turned out that you completely on your own had a whole path to the same thing, which is that you had been obsessed with Batman for years. And when you found out that we were doing this version, you were very interested."
In 2019, the Twilight actor told Variety that he kept coming back to the role and was drawn to the "struggling" and "troubled" masked crusader. "I was very, very focused on it, and I don’t know why. It just kind of kept coming back into my head." He also revealed how he kept "prodding" Matt about the role.
After finding out the 35-year-old had long wanted to portray the iconic Dark Knight, the rest was history. "It was one of those things that for me felt really kind of lucky and fated. And then we met," Matt shared. "I really felt that connection with you where I felt like, 'Oh, we're going to be able to find something new with this guy and do something really special.' But for me, you were always that version of what I saw in the page, and that was about trying to create a new version of Bruce."
The movie — set to come out in theaters March 4 — also stars Zoë Kravitz as Selina Kyle (Catwoman), Andy Serkis as Alfred Pennyworth, Jeffrey Wright as James Gordon, Paul Dano as the Riddler, and Colin Farrell as the Penguin.
Until then! I'll be seeing ALL *gestures wildly* of you in theaters, right?
