20 years after Batman Begins, Jake Gyllenhaal would still like to play the Dark Knight
“It would be an honor,” replies the star actor of the new Road House, who almost became Chris Nolan’s Bruce Wayne.
The arrival of Road House on Prime Video marks the opportunity to find Jake Gyllenhaal in great shape, and present to promote the castagne film by Doug Liman (Memory in the skin, Mr. And Mrs. Smith…). The 43-year-old star logically does not escape questions about the rest of his career… even concerning projects that he ultimately did not film!
Screen Rant for example took advantage of this event to ask the actor if he would be up for playing Batman, 20 years after losing the role to Christian Bale. “Yes of course, he responds straight away. It would be an honor. These characters are classics.”
In the mid-2000s, Jake was indeed one of the actors in the running to play Bruce Wayne, alongside Cillian Murphy, for example. The actor of Donnie Darko was even the favorite of the screenwriter, David S. Goyer…
Jake Gyllenhaal almost became Christopher Nolan's Batman almost became Christopher Nolan's Batman
Director Christopher Nolan had hesitated between several talented actors before choosing Bale, then finally casting one of Gyllenhaal's best friends to face him in The Dark Knight : Heath Ledger. Bluffed by Murphy's attempts, he decided to offer him another villain, Jonathan Crane/The Scarecrow, who is less present than Batman within the saga, obviously, but who we still see throughout the story.
Since the end of Nolan's trilogy, Batman has had two new performers at Warner: Ben Affleck under the direction of Zack Snyder and Robert Pattinson under that of Matt Reeves. There should soon be a third, the branch of the studio responsible for adapting DC comics, headed by Peter Safran and James Gunn, being in the process of designing a future film based on The Bald and the Bold, where Bruce Wayne is Robin's mentor. An actor in his forties, or even a little older, would be ideal for this new incarnation.
Will Jake Gyllenhaal sign on for this role? Patience: for the moment, Gunn is working on his priority Superman. In any case, the actor has never hidden his taste for comics: he finally participated in a superhero production among the competition, in 2019, playing one of the main adversaries of the Spiderman by Tom Holland in Far From Home. But if Warner calls it back one day for a Batmanhe assures that he will not hesitate.
“By the way, speaking of classic roles, which have been played in the past by incredible actors: I'm about to play Iago in Othello with Denzel Washington and I can't stop thinking about all the comedians who have played him throughout time. It's very intimidating. We’re just getting started, that’s what I’m working on at the moment.”
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