‘The Batman’ director was devastated when Robert Pattinson joined ‘Tenet’

Having spent a decade avoiding studio-backed blockbusters after the conclusion of The Twilight Saga, Robert Pattinson ended his self-imposed exile by making two in a row, with a certain Caped Crusader at the eye of the storm.

After boarding Dark Knight trilogy architect Christopher Nolan’s Tenet, the actor was then named as the latest incumbent of the iconic cape and cowl when Matt Reeves hired him to lead The Batman, in a neat slice of coincidental synergy.

In fact, one of the best stories to emanate from the time was when Pattinson revealed he’d told Nolan that he had to leave the set of the time-bending action thriller to deal with a family matter, only for the director to ask him if he was going to audition for the Caped Crusader.

Due to the effects of the pandemic, Tenet and The Batman may have hit theaters nineteen months apart, but Reeves admitted in an interview with the ReelBlend podcast that he was devastated at the thought of scheduling conflicts robbing him of his number one choice to play Bruce Wayne.

“I mean, [Nolan] had a high bar to try to clear, to try to come up to, to try to even come close to meeting. I was aware that he was doing Tenet, and I thought that was really cool. In fact, I was a little … Let me tell you how it really affected me. I wrote the story, I wrote this script with Rob in mind. I wanted him to be my Batman. I had no idea if he was gonna be Batman, and when it was announced that he was cast by Chris in Tenet, I was devastated.

I was convinced – because he’d been doing all of these art films and he’d been working with all these interesting filmmakers … If he’s gonna do a blockbuster, will it be Batman and would he do more than one? When he’s doing a blockbuster with one of the definitive Batman filmmakers, I thought, ‘Okay, so there goes that. He’s not gonna want to be Batman.'”

It worked out pretty well for all parties in the end, with Pattinson’s charismatic supporting turn standing out as one of Tenet‘s highlights, while he’s currently winning rave reviews from critics and fans for his performance in The Batman, so Reeves had nothing to worry about in the long run.