Warn­er Bros con­firms Robert Pat­tin­son as its new Batman

After a few weeks of mur­murs with­out any hard facts, Warn­er Bros. has closed out the week with a stir­ring con­fir­ma­tion that yes, Robert Pat­tin­son will indeed be our next Batman.

Like the anoint­ing of a new Pope – com­mem­o­rat­ed with clink­ing cham­pagne glass­es instead of bil­low­ing white smoke – the selec­tion process for the lat­est iter­a­tion of the Caped Cru­sad­er has been long and ardu­ous. But today, Dead­line ran the exclu­sive that Pat­tin­son won out over con­tender Nicholas Hoult for the lead­ing role in Matt Reeves‘ sched­uled tril­o­gy of films focus­ing on the DC Comics superhero.

The film cur­rent­ly titled The Bat­man and its two planned sequels will keep Pat­tin­son busy for some time, which comes as cause for con­ster­na­tion in the fans that know him pri­mar­i­ly as an art­house main­stay and reg­u­lar pres­ence at Cannes. He wouldn’t be the first thes­pi­an to put a career of chal­leng­ing, unpre­dictable work on pause for a tour of duty through the stu­dio system.

By that same tack, how­ev­er, Pattinson’s adher­ence to the old ​“one for me, one for them” max­im could work in his favor on a longer time­frame. It’s been about a decade since the Twi­light days, and his rep­u­ta­tion as a tick­et-sell­ing movie star could use some recharg­ing; if three Bat­man movies get us eight more films from David Cro­nen­berg or Claire Denis down the line, so be it.

All that said, Pattinson’s sure to do a fine job, bring­ing an actor­ly com­plex­i­ty to the role like Chris­t­ian Bale before him. And above all, these films will exist out­side of the Ben Affleck die­ge­sis, keep­ing Pat­tin­son safe and sound from the clutch­es of the prop­er DC cin­e­mat­ic universe.

The Bat­man comes to cin­e­mas in the US on 25 June, 2021.