Jake Gyllenhaal’s filmography is filled with many amazing projects, and Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight trilogy was almost among them. Screenwriter David S. Goyer recently revealed that Gyllenhaal came really close to playing Batman in this hit movie series.
Goyer, who co-wrote the script for Batman Begins and the story for its sequels The Dirk Knight and The Dark Knight Rises discussed Gyllenhaal’s audition on a recent episode of the Happy Sad Confused podcast and said he believes there’s a video of him in the Batman costume.
“We would chat about all sorts of things. There were a number of people who had screen-tested, and I had advocated for Gyllenhaal. I mean, Gyllenhaal is amazing, Christian Bale is amazing, so who knows what,” said Goyer.
Christian Bale was eventually cast as Bruce Wayne/Batman, and he played the beloved superhero in all three films in The Dirk Knight trilogy, which also starred Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, Gary Oldman, Cillian Murphy, Liam Neeson, Anne Hathaway, Tom Hardy, Aaron Eckhart, Jake’s sister Maggie Gyllenhaal, and his late Brokeback Mountain co-star Heath Ledger.
Despite not being cast as Batman, Gyllenhaal had his superhero moment as Quentin Beck aka Mysterio in Marvel’s Spider-Man: Far From Home. He most recently starred in Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant, and we’ll next see him in Doug Liman’s reimagining of the action classic Road House.
