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Before Robert Pattinson, and before Ben Affleck, Christian Bale was Gotham’s dark defender. Bale starred as Batman in Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy, which began in 2005 with Batman Begins, followed by The Dark Knight in 2008, before concluding with The Dark Knight Rises in 2012.

Nolan and Bale’s Dark Knight trilogy took Batman to new creative heights, challenging the perception of what a superhero movie could be. However, the trilogy could’ve had a different actor under the Batman cowl.

“I wasn’t offered this movie particularly, but I did sit with Christopher Nolan on Batman,” Orlando Bloom admits during a panel at Fan Expo Dallas.

At the time Bloom had just finished filming Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy and had rlecently starred in the first Pirates of the Caribbean film. In other words, he was a bit franchised out. “I just finished all these movies. You know in The Hobbit they talk about a piece of toast that’s spread a little thin? I was like that. I just didn’t know up from down. And I sat down with Christopher Nolan, who I remain one of his biggest fans, and he said, ‘I think we could probably do this, Orlando.’”

However, Bloom was more interested in one of Nolan’s other scripts.

“He had this script called The Keys to the Street, which he had written. He had done Memento, and all of his work is amazing in that. So, I’m like, ‘Well Chris, can we talk about Key to the Street.’ And he was like, ‘No, I’m doing Batman.’”

“I remember I drove away from that meeting, and I called him. I said, ‘Chris, I’m so sorry. I just need to find my life.’ It was a crazy ride I was on, and doing another big trilogy, I could’ve dropped off the face. And he said, ‘Don’t worry, I think we’re going to be in this business for a long time.’ But I’ve yet to work with Chris Nolan again, but maybe I’ll get to one day. He’s a legend.”

While Bloom wonders if things could have been different, he stretches that there was never any formal offer, and he still would’ve needed to do a screentest. “It wasn’t like I was being offered the movie, but I was in this moment.”

James Gunn and Peter Safran are currently looking for a new Batman for the DC Universe. Maybe this could be Bloom’s second chance.

He is vengeance, he is the night, he is... one of Popverse's favorite subjects. Learn how to do a Dark Knight movie marathon right with our Batman movie guide, and for the true World's Greatest Detectives out there, dive deep into the heart of Gotham City by getting to know Batman with Popverse.