LATE CITY
EDITION
LATE CITY
EDITION
Volume 556 Tuesday, June 4, 2019 Page 2 of 2

HOW PATTINSON BECAME BATMAN

for audiences, especially from a marketing point of view.

Nicholas Hoult, 29, who became Pattinson's chief rival later in the process, had been appearing as Hank McCoy, aka the Beast, in the X-Men movies. But Warners execs didn't disqualify him because the X-Men flicks are not part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, are ensemble in nature and Hoult spent large chunks of those movies unrecognizable as a furry blue mutant.

Reeves is said to have spent hours poring over the two actors' work and met with them in April. Pattinson has far more name recognition than Hoult, but it was his work in Good Time and High Life, among others, that Reeves kept on coming back to. Hoult, too, had impressed the deliberate filmmaker, known for his thought-provoking work on the Planet of the Apes franchise, with The Favourite this winter.

The two actors in short order became the only contenders, and during the week of May 20, when Pattinson flew in from Cannes, both shot screen tests in costume on the Burbank lot. Each had a pre-negotiated deal in place, ready to go into effect for whoever had the final contingency lifted, the screen test.

Pattinson and Hoult put on a suit from a previous Batman movie, as has become customary in the Bat-test process. (Christian Bale, before landing Batman Begins, performed his test in the suit used by Val
Kilmer in 1995's Batman Forever, for instance.) Did they embody the character? How did their eyes look and act? Is there a specialness to them? Those were the questions Reeves and the studio wanted answered.

"(Reeves) wanted very specific things," says one insider. "He knew what he was looking for."

Reeves and Warners execs took the week after Memorial Day to deliberate their choices, and by Thursday night, made the calls to the actors. The Batman who would lead the studio into the 2020s had been found.

Pattinson now moves on to the next stage: getting fitted for his own Batsuit, and training for a shoot that will likely take place in early 2020.

Batman Movie Countdown



                    THE BATMAN