Nicholas Hoult found out he didn’t get the role of Batman in a rather cut-throat manner.
The actor, whose credits include About a Boy, unfairly cancelled TV series The Great and the forthcoming vampire horror Nosferatu, was in the running to play the caped crusader in Matt Reeves’s 2022 The Batman.
Hoult, who will play the villain Lex Luthor in James Gunn’s new Superman film, had spoken with Reeves about the role, read the script of the film and had an audition booked in when he discovered Robert Pattinson had been cast instead while listening to the radio.
Appearing on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, the British actor said: “I remember a week before we did the Batman test, I was driving in my car and I had the radio on and they were talking on the radio about how Rob was going to be the new Batman.
“And I was like, ‘It’s not confirmed yet! I’m auditioning next weekend. I was like, give me a chance.’”
Hoult said that he initially struggled with missing out on the opportunity to play Batman, revealing it took a toll on him emotionally.
He added: “There’s a weird period before you can get to the acceptance and see the movie and be like that was the right choice, you go through the period of ‘what could I have done different? Why not me?’ You run through all those things.
“Matt is a fantastic director and the script and everything. I was like, this is going to be a cool movie and I want to be a part of it, and a brilliant character.”
Hoult can currently be seen in Clint Eastwood’s acclaimed new legal drama Juror No 2, which serves as an on-screen reunion with Toni Collette, who played his mother in the 2002 comedy About a Boy.
The pair delighted fans when they attended a screening of the film in October, with Collette asking: “Hasn’t my boy grown up? He’s so funny and handsome. We worked together on About a Boy 22 years ago and it’s taken the genius of Clint [Eastwood] to bring us back together.”
In January, Hoult will appear in Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu, a Dracula-origin story starring Bill Skarsgård, Lily-Rose Depp. Willem Dafoe, Emma Corrin, Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Ralph Ineson.
While the gothic horror will be released in the US on 25 December, Universal will release the film internationally on 1 January.
