The Batman: Nicholas Hoult says losing the role was an “emotional blow”

Nicholas Hoult got very close to playing Bruce Wayne in Matt Reeves’ The Batman but ultimately lost the role to Robert Pattinson. While speaking to Josh Horowitz on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Hoult said that while Pattinson was the right choice, it was still an “emotional blow” to come so close and not get it.

“Yeah, of course, it is an emotional blow because your imagination doesn’t know! You’re aware on a practical level,” Hoult said. “You’re like, ‘I know that I’m auditioning against Rob,’ and Rob’s fantastic in that movie. I think that was the right decision, but also, you get excited about the prospect – Matt’s a fantastic director, and the script and everything I was like, ‘This is going to be a cool movie. I want to be part of it and a brilliant character.’“

Hoult continued: “So then there’s obviously a weird period before you can get to the acceptance and see the movie and be like, ‘Oh yeah that works, that was the right choice.’ You have to go through the period of like, ‘Oh what could I have done differently?’ You run through all those things, obviously. Most people day today don’t care about this stuff, but it feels weird then because you’re like, ‘Oh…’ and it’s one thing to have your failures, it’s one another thing to have them publicly broadcast, seemingly to everyone. It adds an element of drama to it, I suppose.“

The actor recalled hearing on the radio that Robert Pattinson was going to be the new Batman just a week before his own audition. “I was driving in my car, and I had the radio on, and they were like and they were talking on the radio about how Rob was going to be the new Batman, and I was like, ‘Well, it’s not confirmed yet.’ I was like, ‘I’m auditioning next weekend, give me a chance.’“

Hoult was also up for the role of Superman in the upcoming James Gunn movie, but it was decided that he would be a better fit for Lex Luthor. “James Gunn is such a fantastic director and I was so excited by what he was building at DC,” Hoult said. “When we spoke…because they knew I had been through [the Batman] process, they didn’t want me to necessarily have to go through that again. That was very kind of them. There was an element of them being like, ‘We like you as an actor. We want you to be in this world.’” Superman is slated to hit theaters on July 11, 2025.

Nicholas Hoult was recently seen starring in Clint Eastwood’s Juror #2, which Warner Bros. has only released in a handful of theaters across the nation.