In retrospect, Christopher Nolan’s movie casts are not always the industry-dominating mainstream a-listers. The visual directory of Nolan before making a film also includes the potential actors for specific roles.
The Dark Knight trilogy is iconic in its own right but as far as the casting in the franchise goes, the director placed the stars in accurate roles. The $2.4 billion franchise went on to become one of the most celebrated superhero franchises in history and many considered the series was the best Batman trilogy ever.
Casting Cillian Murphy in The Dark Knight Trilogy
Casting Peaky Blinders star Cillian Murphy in the franchise has a pretty interesting backstory. As Christopher Nolan revealed he had to cast the Oppenheimer star after seeing him in a still image of Danny Boyle’s iconic zombie movie 28 Days Later. “I remember I was up in San Francisco writing Batman Begins and there was something in the San Francisco Chronicle about 28 Days Later,” Nolan told Murphy in an interview with Entertainment Weekly.
“I saw a picture of you [Murphy] with your shaved head and your crazy eyes — no offense. I remember being struck by your presence, literally from that one photograph, and then started to look into who you were, and what you’d done, and got very excited about the idea of meeting you.”
But Nolan broke one rule while casting the Irish actor. Typically, major superhero villains were played by the industry’s prominent actors and specifically the Batman villains were the place of the big stars.
“All the previous Batman villains had been played by huge movie stars: Jack Nicholson, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jim Carrey, that kind of thing. That was a big leap for them and it really was purely on the basis of that test. So that’s how you got to play Scarecrow,” Nolan told Murphy.
Of course, Nolan had the ultimate freedom to cast anyone he wanted. Still, his cinematic vision prompted him to star actors like Murphy, Heath Ledger, Aaron Eckhart, and Tom Hardy in villainous roles challenging the previous notion.
Cillian Murphy Auditioned for the Batman Role
Initially, Murphy auditioned for the Batman role but both the actor and the director agreed to the fact that the Red Eye star will not play Bruce Wayne a.k.a. Batman. “I don’t think I’m the physical specimen to play Bruce Wayne,” Murphy said appearing on WTF with Marc Maron podcast.
“It wasn’t right. It wasn’t right. Imagine this, I’m getting to try on a suit, a Batman suit, on the [Warner Bros.] lot, and do a screen test for Christopher Nolan. That’s all my expectations were at the time.”
But the loss of the Batman role did not stop the actor to work with the celebrated director as they have developed a friendship and collaborated on several movies together.
“I have always said publicly and privately, to Chris, that if I’m available and you want me to be in a movie, I’m there. I don’t really care about the size of the part,” Murphy told the Associated Press once.
But playing a lead in a Nolan movie would be any actor’s dream and Murphy cherished the dream as well. “But deep down, secretly, I was desperate to play a lead for him,” he said once. Finally, the 47-year-old played the lead in Nolan’s most recent flick, Oppenheimer.
Oppenheimer is all set to hit the theaters on 21 July 2023.
Source: The Digital Fix.
