Christopher Nolan Speaks Out on Nearly Casting Josh Hartnett as Batman

Christopher Nolan has finally released his next big film with Oppenheimer, and it will tell the story of the creation of the Atom Bomb. Initial reviews for Oppenheimer have been pretty good, with some calling it one of the director's best movies, and from everything we've seen in the trailers, it looks pretty good. Josh Hartnett will appear as Ernest Lawrence in Oppenheimer, but he almost appeared in another Nolan movie. Nolan is busy promoting Oppenheimer, but he had time to talk about Hartnett almost playing Batman in The Dark Knight trilogy. While speaking with Variety, Nolan spoke about meeting with the actor for the role of Bruce Wayne/Batman before he turned the role down.

"No, it never got that far," Nolan told the trade. "I met with Josh and if I recall, he was a young actor whose work I was very interested in. I had an initial conversation with him but he had read my brother's script for 'The Prestige' at the time and was more interested in getting involved with that. So it never went further than that."

Josh Hartnett Recently Spoke on Not Playing Batman

Hartnett recently spoke about not taking on the role of Batman in Nolan's The Dark Knight trilogy, and as it turns out, the actor had some very good reasoning. In a previous interview with The Associated Press, Hartnett revealed that he was just more interested in doing a different movie.

"It wasn't about not doing studio films," Hartnett said. "At the time, what I was interested in was the film that I did instead of that – a tiny film about a guy with Asperger's Syndrome falling in love with a woman with Asperger's Syndrome, a true story, [which] ended up being called Mozart And The Whale. It was just a question more of what I wanted to do as opposed to what I didn't want to do, and I always try to look at things that way."

"I would welcome the opportunity to be in a relationship with a great artist in our film culture, no matter where they're making films and in that instance, I think my regret mostly was not forming the friendship or the creative partnership with that director, more than it was [not] doing Batman." Hartnett added.

Hartnett will appear next in Nolan's Oppenheimer which will mark the first time they gotten to work with each other. Universal describes Oppenheimer as, "Written and directed by Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer is an IMAX®-shot epic thriller that thrusts audiences into the pulse-pounding paradox of the enigmatic man who must risk destroying the world in order to save it. The film is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and the late Martin J. Sherwin. The film is produced by Emma Thomas, Atlas Entertainment's Charles Roven and Christopher Nolan. Oppenheimer is filmed in a combination of IMAX® 65mm and 65mm large-format film photography including, for the first time ever, sections in IMAX® black and white analogue photography."

Oppenheimer features Cillian Murphy as the titular character, Emily Blunt as Katherine "Kitty" Oppenheimer, Matt Damon as Leslie Groves, Robert Downey Jr. as Lewis Strauss, Florence Pugh as Jean Tatlock, Benny Safdie as Edward Teller, Michael Angarano as Robert Serber, Josh Hartnett as Ernest Lawrence, Dylan Arnold as Frank Oppenheimer, David Krumholtz as Isidor Isaac Rabi, Matthew Modine as Vannevar Bush, Josh Peck as Kenneth Bainbridge, Devon Bostick as Seth Neddermeyer, Matthias Schweighöfer as Werner Heisenberg, Christopher Denham as Klaus Fuchs, Guy Burnet as George Eltenton, Danny Deferrari as Enrico Fermi, Emma Dumont as Jackie Oppenheimer, Gustaf Skarsgård as Hans Bethe, Trond Fausa Aurvåg as George Kistiakowsky, and Gary Oldman as Harry S. Truman.

What do you think about Christopher Nolan's comments? Would you have liked to see Josh Hartnett as Batman in The Dark Knight trilogy? Let us know in the comments below or by hitting up our writer @NateBrail on Twitter!