Care to see the audition that earned Christian Bale the role of Batman? The screen test is part of the special features on The Dark Knight Trilogy: Ultimate Collector’s Edition, releasing this Tuesday. A full review of the six disc set’s features are available at Batman News, who graciously gave us the video below of Christian Bale’s screen test. He’s wearing Val Kilmer’s batsuit and auditioning with Amy Adams, who read as Rachel as a favor to casting director John Papsidera. Ha ha, Superman, Batman just stole your girlfriend.
The video below comprises 90 seconds out of the 90 minutes of new special features in the set. Other interesting auditions and casting discussions can be found on the disc, relates Batman News:
They also show Cillian Murphy’s Batman audition. He didn’t quite fit what they were looking for, but Nolan was impressed and asked him to play the Scarecrow instead. Another interesting casting note was that Nolan originally wanted Gary Oldman to play Ra’s Al Ghul. Oldman had already played many villains in his career and wasn’t interested, so Nolan was able to convince him to be Gordon.
There’s brief behind-the-scenes footage of Heath Ledger’s Joker in this section, but not as much as I would have liked. They only spend about five minutes total talking about Ledger and the Joker. And while it’s brief, it’s still very interesting. Christopher Nolan talks about when he met Ledger for the first time, and how other actors he met with for the role were intimidated by Jack Nicholson’s great performance.
Just release Heath Ledger’s Joker Diary already!
https://dailymotion.com/video/x14yskz