Fan-casting the star of an infamously awful comic book bust as the DCU’s Batman is either ignorance or forgiveness

As Ryan Reynolds has shown by overcoming the failures of Blade: Trinity, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and Green Lantern to headline the multi-billion dollar Deadpool franchise, starring in one major comic book bust isn’t going to put the industry off the idea of giving you another chance, although the latest fan-casting for the DCU’s The Brave and the Bold is questionable to say the least.

We don’t have any idea of what’s in store for the next Batman reboot other than the fact James Gunn is leading the creative charge, but that hasn’t stopped the fandom from throwing countless hats into the ring. There’s been some inspired suggestions and some outright terrible ones as you’d expect, but Gabriel Macht being put forward on Reddit raises eyebrows for several reasons.

For one thing, at 51 he’s older than Ben Affleck, with the indications being that we’ll be getting a Bruce Wayne who’s old enough to be the father to a teenager, but still not quite middle-aged. Then there’s the elephant in the room known as The Spirit, which comfortably ranks as one of the most overlooked and deservedly forgotten superhero flops in recent history.

Frank Miller might be a legend when it comes to writing comics, but his track record for directing them in live-action is hardly stellar, with his $60 million take on the pulp favorite earning less than $40 million at the box office, snagging a disastrous 14 percent Rotten Tomatoes score, and then being almost completely swept under the rug and forgotten about in an instant.

That’s not to say Macht couldn’t do a decent job as The Brave and the Bold‘s Caped Crusader, but this one can definitely be filed in the drawer marked “thanks, but no thanks.”