Since the release of Empire Magazine, it looks like we may have a few more Rob magazine covers and interviews. I thought I should bundle them all here and will update if and when they become available. Remember you can always catch up on all things The Batman at our dedicated film page.

24 March 2022

Here are scans of Rob’s interview in Wonderland

Thanks @RobertPattinsonArmyUK

11 March 2022 – New Photos & Interview (Rob excerpts only – click on link to read full interview

Rob, when you were filming, what scene did you feel like you were really Batman?

RP: There was one moment where we were shooting – they built eight blocks of Gotham up in the studios – and there was one day when there were a lot of people playing cops and civilians around, and I was walking across the street and the cape was blowing in the wind and stuff. It was just interesting, because they were all English! And, just hearing lots of English people dressed as American cops just being like, “You alright, Batman?” So that was probably the day I would say. I would be like, “Silence, English peasant!”

Rob, the level of detail in the film extends right down to every scratch and bullet indentation on the Batsuit. Did you create backstories for each mark? And if so, what were some of the more intriguing ones you formulated?

RP: I get shot right at the beginning of the movie. And I just like the fact that, because the movie is over a week, you can see there’s a big bullet dent in my head for the rest of it, which is sort of unusual, you don’t really think about the Batsuit actually being, like, “Oh, this is body armour”. And that was a lighting issue afterwards, sort of reflecting off everything. And also it’s quite a strange shape cranium anyway, and then you’ve got a big dent in it, suddenly it looks really weird. I don’t know if I made individual stories for each scratch though. Yeah, I didn’t do that.

You made it your own. Rob, did you seek any advice from other actors who’ve previously played Batman?

RP: I didn’t. I mean, it’s scary, I don’t like feeling like a baby. I don’t ask for advice, I don’t ask questions, questions are for losers.

JW: You don’t complain either Rob. Not one complaint from you on set for the entirety of the 10 years that we worked on this movie.

RP: I just realised that if you don’t speak, then maybe no one will know you don’t know what you’re doing. But, I mean, I bumped into Christian Bale very briefly, and he was very nice about what to expect and stuff and then, that’s it. I mean, you’re so nervous about doing it and then once the ball’s rolling, it was nonstop for the entire time. We didn’t really have any time to think about it at all.

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7 March 2022

Variety ‘The Batman’ Star Robert Pattinson on Working With Matt Reeves and Testing Positive for COVID-19: ‘It Was Lucky’

When the world first learned that Robert Pattinson was in the running to headline “The Batman,” it was in May 2019, and Pattinson hadn’t even auditioned yet.

“When that thing leaked, I was fucking furious,” Pattinson told Variety for a September 2019 cover story about the release of his film “The Lighthouse.” “Everyone was so upset. Everyone was panicking from my team. I sort of thought that had blown up the whole thing.”

Fortunately for Pattinson, the film’s director, Matt Reeves, was undeterred by the premature press, and cast the now-35-year-old as the latest version of the Caped Crusader. But the hits kept on coming: COVID hit roughly one quarter of the way into filming and the production shut down for six months. When it came back in September 2020, Pattinson tested positive for COVID just one day into filming.

All we did was shoot a day, and already it wasn’t just someone got COVID — Batman got COVID,” Reeves recently told Variety.

Fortunately, the actor recovered quickly and he found a surprising connection with his director while embodying one of the most well-known and successful superheroes in cinema history. In February, Pattinson explained to Variety why he was interested in working with Reeves — hint: all that motion capture filmmaking on Reeves’ “Planet of the Apes” movies played a big role — and what it was like to get used to Reeves’ uncommon filmmaking style.

What did you think of Matt Reeves as a filmmaker before your involvement with “The Batman”? What made you decide you wanted to work with him?

I love those “Apes” movies so much. There’s only been two movies — well, three now — where I wanted to do a sequel: the “Apes” movies, “Sicario” and “Dune.” I saw both of the “Apes” movies in the cinema and I just thought what he could do with mo-cap was just so unbelievable. If he could do that with a monkey’s face, then he can get a performance out of me as well.

Talk me through the day that you first met to discuss the role of Batman.

I’d met Dylan Clark, the producer, probably eight months beforehand. I noticed that he had an involvement with “The Batman.” It was a general meeting with him, and at the end of the meeting, I just kind of casually mentioned, “What’s going on with ‘The Batman?’” He’s like, “Oh, there’s no script right now or anything.” I kept checking in on it and then kind of out of the blue, he said, “Do you want to meet Matt for this project?” Hadn’t seen a script or anything. He was just so lovely and showed me some of the art. There was incredible artwork already done for it, how he’s envisioning Gotham. He had a really interesting take. It was Kurt Cobain, Nirvana references, which as soon as he said it, I’m like, “Oh! Okay.” That’s definitely a different angle on Bruce than we’ve ever really seen before. He’s just an incredibly kind, sensitive, articulate person and it just seemed like the kind of person I want to work with.

Did he talk at all about a larger possible arc to the character beyond this movie, should there be more?

I don’t think so. We’ve kind of had conversations about it since. But, I mean, he spent five years from conception to completion of this. He’s very, very, very, one-track-minded — well, one-project-minded, I guess. And so I think until this comes out, I doubt he’s thought about the next steps yet. Or maybe he has and he hasn’t told me.

So what was his style of directing before and after the COVID shutdown?

Hmm. To be honest, it’s pretty similar. When we came back after the shutdown, we kind of just tried to keep everyone apart as much as possible. I would have an earpiece in which I communicated with Matt, in between takes. It took a second to get used to, but it’s actually kind of nice. I can kind of just keep pestering him all the time rather than trying to find him somewhere in the studio.

But he’s very methodical. Does a lot of takes. At first, when someone [asks for] a lot of takes, you think you’re doing something wrong. But once you realize his rhythm, [you understand] he’s editing the entire movie during every single take. Even the tiniest minutia in the scene, he’s incredibly aware of it. He doesn’t really do an enormous amount of coverage. Very specific angles, but a lot of takes. It’s funny — it takes a while to get on his rhythm, but then when you find it, it’s very, very, very particular. It took me a while to realize it was happening. The movie really, really reflects the exact tone he’s written. He’d seen the movie in his head before we’d even started shooting. It was very impressive.

You mentioned that you had him in your ear while you’re making the movie — what was that like?

Occasionally, they’d leave the mic on. It was slightly disconcerting, but you could hear his little reactions. If it was a tense scene, you’d suddenly hear his breathing accelerate. Sometimes, it would be very, very distracting, but sometimes I’ve actually quite enjoyed hearing his real time reaction. I’ve never been so close to a director’s perception of what I was doing before. It’s a strangely intimate experience.

How personal did he get with you about his connection to this material?

I knew how much he cared about the characters. I think he has a very good understanding of fear. I think a lot of people try to bullshit themselves that they’re not afraid of anything. But Matt really acknowledges things that have scared him in his life and things that scare him presently, and really can project those into his movies.

How did Matt react on the day that you found out you’d tested positive for COVID? What was that conversation like?

It was right at the peak of people not really knowing what exactly was going on. We’d set up a protocol to make the project work, and it just so happened I think I was the first person who had to use the protocol. I mean, I was just kind of embarrassed by the whole thing, to be honest. It was so early on after we started shooting and everyone was just so sweet. Andy Serkis, who I was working with at the time, was absolutely lovely about it. I was terrified of what was gonna happen to production. But it all actually was kind of a good proof of concept for how to proceed, and after that point, nothing really happened anyway. It was lucky.

The Direct: The Batman: How Robert Pattinson’s Eye Makeup Helped Him Win His Audition

In an interview with Twitter Movies, The Batman director Matt Reeves responded to a tweet asking for “[Robert Pattinson to] drop a makeup tutorial for Bruce’s eyeliner.”

Reeves mentions how that was actually “one of the things that [he] threw” at the actor during his audition, and he asked Pattinson to “look at yourself in the mirror as you transform and put on that eye makeup:”

“It’s in the movie [laughs]. You know what’s so funny is that when I was doing [Robert Pattinson’s] screen test, one of the things that I threw him a curveball… I said I want to do this thing. I want to see what Rob does if I throw him this challenge… He was in one of the original Batsuits, one of the ones with nipples, and we were shooting it, and he came up to a mirror that I set up for him, and I said, ‘I just want you to look at yourself in the mirror as you transform and put on that eye makeup.’ And I just thought that moment would be interesting. It wasn’t in the script. And Rob was so fascinating to watch when he was doing it. When I showed it to the studio, they were captivated, and I was like, ‘We have to put this in the movie.’ And so, it’s in the movie. You see him doing it. It’s like he puts on the war paint, and that’s what Batman would have to do.

Baller Alert:  Robert Pattinson Talks Playing an Unorthodox Version of Batman and More 

In an exclusive interview with Baller Alert, Pattinson shares how this version of Batman is significant to him and how he made it original.

“The script made some radical changes from the familiar version of Batman. He’s not a playboy or part of high society like Bruce normally is,” said Pattinson. “He’s a complete weirdo, which kinda opened up a realm of possibilities to play Bruce and how to create Batman. The role organically felt different to me.”

One of the most notable elements of the film is how “The Batman” doesn’t delve into the origins of the Dark Knight. Instead, the film dives into the more defining moments of the Caped Crusador and Bruce Wayne’s family trauma — the story fans aren’t quite familiar with.

Pattinson shares what he wants fans to take away from this portrayal of the character. “The movie is about the unusual ways people get over the trauma and how it manifests afterward,” he said. “When you look at Batman and see him fight this one-on-one crime dressed as a sort-of a demon — There’s a deep issue there.”

He continued, “But also, it kinda makes his character more sane to me in a way. Rather than having total control over it, he’s compelled to do it instead. And I think fans should know that.”

At the core of the character is Batman’s connection to people because of the suit, the car, and gadgets, but he’s not really a superhero. He’s a human being driven to make sense of the human side of him.

Pattinson does a great job portraying Reeves’ isolated, socially awkward version of Bruce Wayne, who’s also a detective. Following Michael Keaton, George Clooney, Christian Bale, and Ben Affleck, The Lighthouse actor said he’s glad he was able to deliver the role during this time in his life.

“I’m glad I got this role when I was older because it’s a ton of pressure, and I’m a lot better at handling pressure than I used to be,” he said. “We were also working under very intense circumstances, and after seeing it, I don’t even know how Matt Reeves did this. I’m still stunned.”

Given his career moves of late, it may seem surprising that Pattinson decided to play Batman — one of the most buzzed-about roles an actor can get. But after seeing the movie, it makes perfect sense. As he steps back into the spotlight, I’m sure “The Batman” will be what propels him back to blockbuster success.

4 March 2022 – LA Times & Wonderland

Wonderland gave us another new photoshoot by Ellen von Unwerth. Rob and Zoe are covering their Spring 2022 issue. Rob talks becoming Batman and why the role initially felt out of reach.

“I mean, it’s a different thing. When you look at reactions on the internet, everyone’s got this kind of aggressive opinion about things. But I remember when I was shooting The Batman, when I met people in London, people were just so excited to talk to you about it. There’s a generosity people show towards the character [in real life] which is really, really lovely. The internet reaction feels much more doubtful, but in reality, people are just like, ‘No shit!? You’re playing Batman! That’s absolutely insane…People talk to you about it as if you’re driving a one-off Lamborghini which they all know about.”

Click on link to preorder your copy.

” I was in competitive actor mode! I was like, ‘I wonder who else was out for that part?’ I knew a few people who had gone out and tested for it too so I was comparing them to you – as you do [laughs]. And then I felt really comforted by that too because I think you have really, really good taste and I knew The Batman was going to be different from the [superhero] films I’d seen before, and protected from being too… I don’t know, cheesy, you know what I mean? Superhero films can go so horribly wrong in general. But I think [the roles] are what both of us are looking for in terms of art and the artists that we want to be. I think you’ve done a really incredible job at navigating your career and working with up-and-coming directors, writers, and searching for things that interest you – and taking really big risks as you go. You make really bold choices as an actor. I’m honestly blown away by you when I watch your work. I’m like,‘ Oh, my God, Rob’s like a really good actor.’”

Not everyone is willing to scale the roof of The Hollywood Roosevelt hotel or, slathered in lube, slip into a latex bodysuit for the sake of fashion. Luckily for renowned photographer Ellen Von Unwerth, Zoë Kravitz’s and Robert Pattinson’s desire to embrace the stranger things in life is what makes them so hypnotically electrifying. And, in all fairness, donning an unconventional ‘suit’ is something the two actors have become quite accustomed to lately…

LA TImes: Can Robert Pattinson and Matt Reeves’ rebooted ‘The Batman’ save the box office?

When director Matt Reeves announced he had tapped Robert Pattinson to play Batman in his much-anticipated franchise reboot in 2019, fans from every corner of the internet immediately began sharpening their knives.

Never mind that Pattinson had spent years taking a sledgehammer to his tween-heartthrob image in a series of unglamorous arthouse roles, from a small-time bank robber in the grungy “Good Time” to a lonely 19th century lighthouse keeper in the hallucinatory “The Lighthouse.” For many, the idea of the one-time “Twilight” vampire tackling one of the superhero canon’s most iconic characters in “The Batman,” which opens Friday, seemed like a potential bat-astrophe in the making.

Pattinson took the initial backlash in stride. “I was actually mocked less than I usually am,” the actor, seated alongside Reeves, said over Zoom on a recent afternoon. He laughed. “I was quite shocked. ‘Only 70% negative? A-plus!’ ”

Nor was Reeves, who had stepped into the project after its initial star and director Ben Affleck dropped out, particularly concerned. “When you go into a Batman movie, you just have to kind of harden yourself in the beginning,” said Reeves, who had earned the job largely on the strength of his two critically and commercially successful installments in the “Planet of the Apes” series. “It’s an 80-year-old character. Every time you step into it, you’re stepping into something where everybody already has a preconception.”

Pattinson’s casting is far from the only aspect of “The Batman” likely to shake up preconceived notions. Clocking in at three hours, with a dense narrative and a style that veers from gritty noir to angsty psychodrama to serial-killer horror, Reeves’ movie returns Batman to his roots as “the world’s greatest detective.” Dispensing with the overly familiar origin story, the film tracks Batman’s pursuit, aided by Catwoman (Zoë Kravitz), of the elusive Riddler (Paul Dano), who is sprinkling clues about a sprawling conspiracy of corruption — along with dead bodies — throughout the troubled city of Gotham.

Arriving at a moment that’s fraught with peril and anxiety not just for the movie business but for the entire world, “The Batman” has received largely positive reviews from critics. But it remains to be seen how audiences will receive Reeves’ twisty, violent and deadly serious film, which is closer in spirit to ’70s classics like “Chinatown” and “The French Connection” than to your stereotypical glossy, slam-bang superhero fare.

The Times spoke with Reeves, 55, and Pattinson, 35, about fashioning a new take on an old character, creating a Gotham for our times and trying to safeguard not just the future of the Batman franchise but the movie business as we know it.

Rob, you’ve spent the past decade working with directors like David Cronenberg, Claire Denis and the Safdie brothers on smaller, artier films. It didn’t appear you were on a trajectory toward a comic-book movie. So what grabbed you about the proposition here?

Pattinson: Even like five years ago, I was the last person I would think would be cast as Batman. I’m never normally in consideration for superhero parts at all. Usually [in those roles] you’re either a total unknown or someone who just, I don’t know, seems more obvious.

I don’t understand what it was about Batman, but I got really fixated on it and kept pushing my agent about it. I loved Matt’s work on the “Planet of the Apes” movies so much, and a lot of Matt’s work. and I was thinking, if you can get that performance out of a monkey … . [laughs] Then I met Matt and just he had such an interesting take on the character, and it just felt very different and kind of dangerous. It felt like a big, big mountain to climb.

Reeves: Because of all those movies you mentioned, I thought Rob might not be interested in being on that [superhero casting] list. But for some reason, in my mind, it was Rob. From the work I had seen him doing, I just was like, ‘Wow, he’s such a chameleon.’ Specifically in the Safdie brothers movie [“Good Time”], there was a kind of desperation and drive and also a vulnerability that I thought was very Batman, and I thought that mix was so powerful.

Given all the previous iterations of the character in movies, TV, video games and comics, what were your initial thoughts about how you could approach Batman in a way that felt fresh?

Pattinson: In our first meeting, Matt mentioned Kurt Cobain was one of the linchpins of the character. Just that put something in my head. There’s something about this kind of self-imposed torment that I always found really interesting and also inheriting a life that you’re not entirely sure you want but also feel like you cannot give up at all. I remember we also talked a lot about Michael Corleone.

Reeves: One of the great things about Batman is, because he doesn’t have any superpowers, it’s extremely psychological. He’s really doing this as a way of coping, because something happened to him [in his childhood] that he’s never gotten over. He’s exorcising these demons night after night after night.

He is a character who essentially is stunted. He’s sort of stuck emotionally at being 10 years old, and that’s exacerbated by the fact that he has this safety net of being incredibly rich. But he chooses to do this very brave, daring, reckless, almost suicidal thing, trying make meaning out of his life by going out and taking the law into his own hands

This is a three-hour movie with dark, adult themes and an intricate plot that requires close attention. Are you confident that the comic-book genre as we’ve come to know it has evolved to the point that audiences will embrace a movie like this?

Reeves: There‘s a point with these kinds of movies where you have to put them in front of an audience to know whether or not they work. And I remember I had to show the head of the studio, [Warner Bros. Chairman] Toby Emmerich, the first cut of the movie in front of a test audience. I wasn’t anywhere near done with the cut, and it was much longer than it is now. And I thought, “This is suicide. This is the moment where it becomes clear that the idea of challenging an audience in this way is insane.” And they loved it.

The one thing I felt in the beginning was there was no way we could make a Batman movie that felt like it was just another Batman movie. We had to fulfill the things people expect from it: you know, the Batmobile chase and all those things that get a tremendous response. But it was incumbent upon us to do something different. And I was really excited that the test audiences actually really loved the parts of the film that they didn’t expect. So in that sense I am confident.

Any big movie is challenging, but here you were making this brooding, Kurt Cobain-inspired take on Batman, shooting often at night and in the rain, in the midst of a global pandemic. At one point, the production had to shut down because Rob contracted COVID. I have to ask, were you actually having any fun?

Pattinson: There’s a weird pleasure to spending long amounts of time in the suit and in the dark. You’re quite sealed off from everybody else when you’re inside the cowl, and it’s quite meditative. You’re alone a lot of the time. No one is chatting with you because you’ve got the mask on and you can’t hear. It allows you to slip into this quite Zen state.

There was so much chaos going on in real life every single day, as soon as you got out of that studio and looked at your phone, you had to really silence a lot of that stuff to even focus on what you were doing in the first place. The same as Bruce putting on the suit, you go into this kind of strangely simplistic state where you can really just focus on one thing. You’re just thinking, “If there’s still a world after we finish this movie there’s still going to be Batman fans in it, so you’d better not mess this up.”

The fictional world of Batman has always been rife with violence and corruption. But over the five years you spent working on this film, the real world has felt increasingly chaotic, fractured and out of control. Did all of that feed into your conception of Gotham?

Reeves: I started working on the script in 2017, so it was a long time ago. There were real events I was thinking of, but it was like Watergate. I thought the idea of doing a film that was kind of like “All the President’s Men,” where there was a conspiracy that went all the way to the top of the city, was exciting.

The whole idea was to make Gotham a heightened version. Then as we were making the movie, there was so much going on in the world that there were moments where the world felt more heightened than Gotham. And we thought, “Wow, is this movie going to be too light?” [laughs]

I remember shooting the scene where Jayme Lawson [who plays a Gotham mayoral candidate] is giving that speech about how we need to rebuild not just our city but our faith in institutions and each other. At that moment, these things just suddenly seemed to resonate in a way that I never intended that directly.

The stakes for this movie would already be enormous, but it’s being released two years into a pandemic that has wreaked havoc on the movie business and put the future of the big-screen experience in doubt. Does that raise the pressure even higher on this film to prove that movies still matter?

Reeves: For sure it does. It is absolutely an existential situation. If you look back even five years at the movie business, it’s just radically different. When I first started my career, the movies that were being made were so different in so many ways. Now there are all these huge questions: What’s going to work on the big screen? What’s going to be in the streaming space? Will there even be a theatrical experience?

This movie was made as an immersive big-screen experience. It was meant to put you into a subjective experience — a propulsive experience, a psychological experience — that really is meant to overwhelm you. So it absolutely would not be, and will not be, the same on streaming. I really hope that we are one of the movies that can prove that there still is a viable theatrical film business.

Hopefully when the pandemic starts to recede even more, then it won’t feel so existential. There is a sense that maybe we’re starting to be on the back side of it, and “Spider-Man” and “Venom” and other superhero movies working is very encouraging for us. But at the moment, it does. You want to believe that that big-screen experience, which was the reason we wanted to make movies in the first place, is still going to exist.

Pattinson: Every movie is a complete gamble, every single time. But it’s an entirely different thing when no one cares or knows what you’re doing and you need to drum up interest. When people are expecting something, there’s definitely some trepidation. It feels like you’re going into the ring. You’re going into the Colosseum.

UPDATED: 3 March 2022

PEOPLE: Robert Pattinson Was ‘Counting Sips of Water’ Before Shooting Shirtless Scenes for The Batman

28 Feb 2022 *UPDATED*

Perfil (Spain): The return of the dark knight (translated with Google) + NEW PHOTO

Batman returns. And this time, the look at the most recyclable myth in modern pop history is from Matt Reeves, famous for revitalizing the cute Planet of the Apes saga. He is not alone: ​​his Batman is Robert Pattinson, who broke away from huge pop (his famous passage through the Twilight saga and turned to auteur cinema), his Catwoman is Zoë Kravitz, more powerful every day in the cinema, and his Riddler It’s Paul Dano. All of them, their actors, narrate the experience of filming the new hooded man. 

—In the comics Batman and Catwoman have always had a special bond, particularly in recent years where they even got married, how would you then define the bond that is generated in this new film taking into account all the iterations of that mythical duo?  

ZOË KRAVITZ: I like the idea of ​​thinking that it’s the start of trouble. From a huge, fun, beautiful problem that’s been huge, fun, and beautiful for over 80 years now. a problem It is not known exactly what it is, they smell each other, they measure each other, they dance seeing what step each one takes. What unites these characters stems from a need, but already from the design, I mean the very design of the link and the characters, there was something there that had a component that only appears very occasionally. In the movie they need each other, but they don’t trust each other. They discover. They are two characters, two subjects, independent in their way of life, be it nocturnal or, well, let’s say daytime. And that, suddenly, can’t work like that anymore. The fun is to see how they deal with it. This story tries to discover if it is a romance, a friendship, an “employment” relationship. They are discovered as similar, but does that unites them or separates them? 

ROBERT PATTINSON: These are people who believe they draw power from their pain, they try to recover something that they don’t want to recover. They are strong, sure, but at the same time they are fragile characters, literally on the edge of the ledge. And more at the time the film is located, in those beginnings. It’s an awkward start between two characters, and especially when one of them has a mask on his face all the time.

—Considering the history of the characters, again, what happens when a role like that appears in someone’s life? What happens when something bigger than life is your job and it’s going to be skin for a while?

Q: I’m a fan of Batman, everyone knows it, everyone said it. I’ve seen all his movies in the cinema. I have read it. Always, since I was a child, Batman has been in my life. How could I not be? As soon as I found out that there was a remote possibility that I could be part of this new version, I wanted that role. And I wanted it so much that I didn’t think about the nerves that it could generate in me: that was the level of obsession, so great, so immense that I didn’t even see everything that could come later. And it was a lot. It was a lot. The strange thing is that I was never particularly nervous: it was always more of a party, it was always more of a lot of hard work, but a beautiful job. There were no nerves in me, not hard, not in a way that I might have expected. Now, before the premiere, I am getting nervous. It is a very big bet. It is a very different interpretation, and that there are many. It’s a different term for Batman. He surprises you. I think it’s a very intelligent reading of the character, and one that will be enjoyed by the fans, by everyone. For me, the essence of comics has never been captured like here, here the most conflicted aspect of him is staged, the one that has most defined his masterpieces celebrated on paper.

K: I always watched the Batman movies. But there is something about Batman, in what I saw in the cinema, that fascinated me: they were all phenomena, outsiders, good or bad. They were monsters in the eyes of others. I always felt like a freak, so I felt close to this universe. I loved, like the world, the villains of this world. And yes, now I’m terrified for the premiere. The fans, the story I tell, and more, it’s a little scary. 

—Robert, you never hid your fanaticism, your knowledge about the character in various media, so is there something you think you discovered about this character because of the possibility of being, precisely, this character? Is there something when you’re in there that you suspected didn’t exist in Batman and now you can’t unsee it? 

“That happened to me almost immediately. For a character that everyone recognizes, that she is so familiar with in popular culture, that even defines her, that he is arguably an icon, there are many levels that one immediately accepts. And suddenly you have to rewrite it and no; for example, at the beginning of the process with Matt Reeves there were things that we immediately said “that’s not Batman” and that had nothing to do with anything other than our idea of ​​Batman, the popular one. I mean, Matt’s vision is Matt’s, but Batman prevails, alone, by weight, by myth. But with that said, as soon as I put on the suit for the first time, I suddenly felt an emptiness that I didn’t think I was going to feel. 

—Do you have to fill the myth?

-Exactly. It happens to you that you have to fill the suit, with ideas, from a world, beyond, precisely, our world and its conceptions of Batman. If not, you’re just an idiot walking around in an expensive suit. Nobody is going to believe you. When you begin to fragment his personal characteristics, those that give me tools as an actor and not as a comic book cover, many things begin to appear there, many questions. Why does he just want to exorcise the demons from him by being this literal character that he believes in more than anyone, but who he believes isn’t him? It took me a long time to understand that mechanism. Understand that fundamental engine. And I think you only realize it in a very particular way, far from theory, when you put on the suit to interpret it. I’m sure that has happened to all the actors who played him.

—Zoë, in previous interviews, you talked about facing Catwoman, Catwoman, from realism, how do you work that in this case?

K: It’s the way I approach all the characters. I don’t know how to work otherwise. But there is a reason why we love this character and it has to do with his air of mischief and the power of him, how one thing increases the other. He is independent and a survivor. Due to the superficial nature of superheroes, perhaps we see it for the basics, for the immediate: he is sexy, he has a whip, and that becomes the base. But now the sexiest thing about him, in a while, is his freedom, his fearlessness, his ability to defy the rules. Everything is there, but Catwoman has long been a complex character, that she does not need to be good or bad. Like a cat, you can never read it. There are so many layers beyond the fetish, that’s why she wanted to break the idea and enjoy the freedom.

the usual question

Paul Dano has been Brian Wilson, he has been part of Bloody Oil, considered the most powerful film of recent years in many rankings. But now it is, and it is not a surprise, The Riddler, the famous character from the Batman universe who has a radical version here, as has already been seen in previews and that the actor himself confirms: “It is difficult to talk about that. But I can start from the beginning. I got one of those weekend calls, over the weekend. That in Hollywood can only be two things: urgent bad news or urgent good news. Matt Reeves wanted to send me the script for Batman, and I was very excited. It was pretty clear from the first and second pages that you were reading a script that someone wrote with a cinematic vision. I couldn’t believe what I had read. And it wasn’t necessarily what he expected to feel. The first question is why another Batman movie? And Matt Reeves was speaking from a very clear place. His Gotham City, the archetypes of the characters, the idea of ​​the saga. There was always something emotional there, throbbing, personal. His point of view comes from him, and that’s considerable for an artist dealing with Batman, who’s always been a great container, so over the decades he’s evolved from different authors. I immediately felt ready for that Riddle, for how I wanted to interpret it. It is very different from any other he had read or seen. He gave me the keys to a new classic character. I’m very excited about what we did.” There was always something emotional there, throbbing, personal. His point of view comes from him, and that’s considerable for an artist dealing with Batman, who’s always been a great container, so over the decades he’s evolved from different authors. I immediately felt ready for that Riddle, for how I wanted to interpret it. It is very different from any other he had read or seen. He gave me the keys to a new classic character. I’m very excited about what we did.” There was always something emotional there, throbbing, personal. His point of view comes from him, and that’s considerable for an artist dealing with Batman, who’s always been a great container, so over the decades he’s evolved from different authors. I immediately felt ready for that Riddle, for how I wanted to interpret it. It is very different from any other he had read or seen. He gave me the keys to a new classic character. I’m very excited about what we did.” He gave me the keys to a new classic character. I’m very excited about what we did.” He gave me the keys to a new classic character. I’m very excited about what we did.

27 Feb 2022 *Updated*

Radio Times: Robert Pattinson was told off for taking socks from The Batman set

It looks like Robert Pattinson got into a bit of trouble on the set of the upcoming The Batman – after the star repeatedly took socks from the production.

During a virtual press conference to promote the new movie, the cast was asked if they’d taken anything from the set, which prompted Selina Kyle actor Zoe Kravitz to reveal: “Rob took socks!”

“No, I do have a lot of them,” Pattinson admitted. “They told me to stop stealing them.”

Kravitz was understanding about the situation – explaining that “it’s easy to leave with socks on” before she asked him, “Or was it more intentional than that?”

And Pattinson confirmed, “No it was intentional. It was kind of…after a while, it was a 156-day shoot and they’re like ‘how…you have 156 pairs of socks. Like, what on Earth are you doing with them?’ Ya don’t wanna know!”

24 Feb 2022

Flicks Australia: Robert Pattinson, Zoë Kravitz and director Matt Reeves tell us all about The Batman (SPOILER ALERT)

NOTE: – I have only posted Rob’s answers and I have avoided the rest of interview as it’s spoilerish – click on link above if you would like to read more from Paul Dano and Matt Reeves

How Kravitz and Pattinson achieved their electric on-screen chemistry

ZOË KRAVITZ: It was very easy. Me and Rob have been friends for a long time and a lot of it was on the page. It’s really what Matt wrote, right? Where the emotional states of both of these characters are so clear, and the connection that they find in each other, and why they connect, so clear. So I feel like it was built-in, these people really, they both felt alone their entire lives. And to meet somebody who has a similar way of thinking that grabs you the way that they kind of grab each other, I think it really is the heart of the story. It’s a really big deal for for both these characters to feel this way. So if you’re attached to your character emotionally, it’s really easy to play that part of it.

ROBERT PATTINSON: On massive productions like this, it can be quite easy to feel quite disconnected from the story because there’s so many moving parts, and to have another performer who you can really see is putting everything into it, it’s a reflective experience where it makes you want to work harder. Even while we were doing rehearsals, she was constantly training and you occasionally come across actors who just wouldn’t put that level of effort in.

Pattinson on playing a younger, less experienced Batman

ROBERT PATTINSON: I think it allows for an opening a little bit easier. Normally Batman goes away, he trains and he comes back fully-realised, confident, he’s competent in his ability to change, he’s heroic when he comes back. In this, I loved all of the frailties he has. [Like] in the scene when he’s jumping off [the top of a building] when [he’s] using the cape the first time. Batman’s always been kind of fallible, it’s just a man [in an] armored suit, but this really really embraces that so much. It makes it more interesting to play.

23 February 2022 *Updated*

The Digital Fix: Robert Pattinson worried he was overacting on “worst day” shooting The Batman

Robert Pattinson's #TheBatman universe might be a little too grounded for Justice League heroes like Superman. pic.twitter.com/is7iPKKdDV

— ComicBook.com (@ComicBook) February 23, 2022

Premiere France: Matt Reeves and Robert Pattinson talk about their reimagining of the Dark Knight

21 February 2022

20 Min “I had trouble moving in my latex suit” (translated from French – Google Translate)

What drew you to this new take on such a famous superhero?

He is one of the most important characters of the 20th century and there are many people who identify with him on many levels. Our version shows something different. He has a desperate side. My Batman has rage in him, which fascinates me. Each of his fights seems to be very personal in his mind.

Did you audition for this role?

I met director Matt Reeves and gave it a try. I was given the Batman costume that Val Kilmer wore in the 1990s to wear, which was crazy! My first thought was to tell myself that it would be impossible. I had difficulty moving in my latex suit on which I had a kind of armor. The worst is that I couldn’t stop sweating. It took until I was dry to start filming (laughs).

How is your Batman different from previous ones?

In previous films, Bruce Wayne was sure of himself and knew what he was doing when he put on the Batman costume. In our version, he doesn’t yet have control of his personality. He is looking for himself. I love this idea of ​​Bruce being a little out of control. He is not sleeping and has not yet fully defined who Batman should be.

You said that music is important in your preparation. Before shooting this film, did you listen to it?

Music is essential. It helps me to immerse myself in an atmosphere. To prepare myself to be Bruce Wayne, I listened to classical music, especially symphonies, like those of Bach or Wagner. I listened to them in full as if I were watching a movie.

20 February 2022

Another new photo alert thanks to TV Spielfilm Stars & Stories. It appears there is no new information in this article.

Thanks @Simply_RobPat

ExtraTV: Why Robert Pattinson Felt Nauseous After Landing Batman Role (Rob excerpt below – click on link to read full article)

“The Batman” stars Robert Pattinson and Zoë Kravitz are opening up to “Extra’s” Rachel Lindsay about their roles in the highly anticipated DC movie.

…

Rachel asked, “I am wondering, these are such iconic roles, was there any hesitation or any moment where you reflected and you thought, ‘Can I do this?’”

Robert added, “It’s the one time in my life… we’re really glad that the work schedule was so relentless… It was 155 days or something. We work kind of 14 hours, and we work out either end of the day. And like, I mean, by the time you go, there’s no looking at comments.”

Sharing who they first told they had landed the roles. Zoë revealed, “Call my parents.”

Rob shared,, “I genuinely didn’t tell anyone because also it got leaked, before I actually got cast, and I genuinely wasn’t cast. And my entire world texted me like, ‘Are you playing Batman?’… I went to do another movie [and] in every single interview it was, ‘Are you playing Batman?’… I genuinely thought if I say anything…. I was going to lose the job… I didn’t text a single person back… I felt, like, nauseous.”

Smiling, he said, “When I first got the call, I went, sat in the garden, and I looked at the sun.”

Rob wanted to make Bruce Wayne his own in the film, saying he was going to be a bit of a weirdo. “I mean, one of the major things that Matt [Reeves] changed from the traditional times of Batman is that Bruce wasn’t a playboy… He’s a complete hermit, and so I was trying to imagine what he’d really gone through since his parents’ death… Everything was just full of dust, everything’s broken.”

He went on, “And he’s kind of had this incredibly strange, complicated self-help, which as now you know, if no one’s telling him to stop, he thinks like, ‘Oh, I’ve healed myself… Now I can reemerge into my life.’ And so even the people who care about him are thinking like, ‘I really don’t think this is a good idea, Bruce… this is the craziest idea you’ve ever had. And maybe you should go back to staying in your room.’”

19 February 2022

New photo alert – and if anyone can translate the Rob portions it would be appreciated.

Thanks @sallyvg

The article below is the question I wanted to ask of Rob when The Batman twitter said send us your questions. So I guess now I know!

GQ Mexico: The Batman: Robert Pattinson, Paul Dano and Wright reveal what they stole from the set

During a press conference, Matt Reeves , the director and the actors confessed that the set was full of very interesting things, so when it was over, they took some small things, although not all the things they would have liked to have (because taking a Batmobile would definitely have been notorious and very difficult).

It is almost a tradition that the actors take some memory and the case of The Batman was no exception.

The Batman and the props the cast took from the set

…

“I got a jacket from the Gotham Sanitation Department, it wasn’t actually used in the movie, but it’s really cool and I’ve actually worn it a couple of times.” he said, to which Zoe Kravitz responded by asking if he had asked permission or just taken it. The jacket was “stolen”, but surely no one is going to ask Batman to return it.

…

17 February 2022

EW: Knight Moves: Robert Pattinson and Zoë Kravitz take flight in The Batman

Just like Batman and Catwoman, Robert Pattinson and Zoë Kravitz have a bit of a history: The stars of The Batman (in theaters March 4), have known each other for more than a decade. You can tell as they tease one another about their flirting skills (or lack thereof) at their EW cover shoot in downtown L.A. in late January, or by how nonchalantly Pattinson drapes a camel coat over Kravitz’s shivering shoulders after they wrap on a chilly rooftop as the sun sets. But their story as the Dark Knight and the most famous cat burglar of all time didn’t begin until their chemistry test on a Warner Bros. soundstage in Burbank in October 2019.

Both actors were feeling the pressure that day. “The chemistry read was really intense,” Kravitz, 33, tells EW. They had to perform one of several intimate exchanges Batman and Selina have in the film, the scene also serving as Kravitz’s audition because The Batman director Matt Reeves chose to meet with her before the Big Little Lies star even read a single line. “Rob was wearing the Batsuit, and it was a proper camera test with the DP there and everything on a soundstage. It wasn’t just reading lines in a room. So it was intimidating, to say the least,” she says. Her first task? The seemingly simple act of taking off a motorcycle helmet. “That totally spun me into a little bit of anxiety,” she recalls. “It’s wildly complicated to take off a helmet and look cool, not have it get stuck on your head, or your hair look funny. I was convinced that was going to be my downfall.” 

Meanwhile, Pattinson was experiencing his own bout of anxiety, even though he was already cast. In keeping with Warner Bros. tradition, he had already completed a solo screen test in a classic Batsuit — Val Kilmer’s from Batman Forever, nipples and all — even if it was a tad tight. But he had also yet to utter a word as his character. “The first time I’d even said lines from the script was in Zoë’s screen test,” says the 35-year-old actor. “They had this idea that they wanted me to be taller at the beginning, so I basically had high-heeled sneakers on, and I’m tottering around in this strange Batman outfit. The camera’s not even on me, it’s on the back of my head, and I’m literally having this major panic attack, just looking for emotional support from Zoë, who’s trying to get the part.” 

Whatever Scarecrow-toxin-level fears were coursing through the stars’ minds, they weren’t apparent to Reeves. “They really connected,” says Reeves, best known for directing Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and its sequel War for the Planet of the Apes. “Everyone could see there was something really special between them.” And thus, Reeves found his Bat and Cat, a crucial moment because their tortured love story, he says “is absolutely central” to the film.

As intense as Kravitz and Pattinson’s energy was, the project that brought them together begs a larger question: In a world of franchises and existing IPs and superhero fatigue, why do we need another Batman? What makes this iteration different from, say, Tim Burton’s theatrically gothic vision in Batman and Batman Returns, or Christopher Nolan‘s Dark Knight Trilogy, which staged a war between chaos and order? For Reeves, it was all about questioning a specific aspect of the Batman myth.

“I felt that it was important to examine this idea of him being an emblem of vengeance. Is that really the right approach to all of this?” says Reeves. “[I wanted] to have the movie take you on a journey where you start having one point of view about what he’s doing and then have that challenged in such a way so that you knew by the end, he would have an awakening and he himself would have some change that he’d have to undergo.” 

Six years after Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice starring Ben Affleck, WB’s latest attempt to reboot the Caped Crusader’s cinematic franchise definitely isn’t an origin story, but Batman and Selina aren’t fully formed either, nor are they anywhere close to becoming the rooftop-loving married couple they are in the present-day comics. The Batman is set during year two of Bruce Wayne’s war on crime and focuses on Batman’s detective side (more deciphering clues, fewer galas). Selina, while very fond of cats and casual breaking and entering, hasn’t adopted the Catwoman moniker yet. 

Selina isn’t the only one who challenges Batman’s code. As the Riddler’s body count rises, the world’s greatest detective-in-the-making diligently follows the clues, solving one taunting riddle after another, and unearths Gotham’s secret history — some of which involves his beloved parents. This shakes him to the core. “I wanted a Batman that was still becoming,” says Reeves, who wrote the script with Peter Craig (The Town). “I didn’t want, Here comes the rogues’ gallery characters, and here’s Batman, and aren’t they exciting, and he’s going to beat them. I wanted it to be much more psychological for his character to have a place to go.” 

The Batman kicks off the third Batman franchise of the 21st century. Originally, it was part of the second because the movie began as a follow-up to 2016’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, which starred Affleck as an older and more hardened version of Gotham’s protector. Affleck was supposed to direct and star in The Batman, but in January 2017, he shaved his responsibilities down to just starring. Warner Bros. turned on the Batsignal to find a new helmer to shepherd the project and chose Reeves. (Ridley Scott and Fede Alvarez were also reportedly on the studio’s shortlist.) But the director didn’t initially answer the call(s) because he was deep into arduous post-production on War for the Planet of the Apes. 

“[Warner Bros.] kept coming back. I was almost getting annoyed. I was like, ‘Wait, what don’t they understand about the fact that I’m making this movie?'” says Reeves, who thought WB just wanted to have a general meeting until his agent set him straight: The studio wanted him to direct Batman. “[My agent] said, ‘If you have any interest, you might want to find the time to take that meeting.'” 

He did. And read the script that Affleck, Geoff Johns (Stargirl), and Chris Terrio (Justice League) had reportedly been working on. According to Reeves, it was an “action-based James Bondian” story, intimately tied to the DC Extended Universe (DCEU) through appearances from “other big superheroes.” 

“It was a totally valid take on the story,” he says. “I just felt that I was not going to be their guy because having read it, I thought, ‘Wow, I don’t know if I can find my emotional way into this version.’ Not to say it wasn’t good, but I wouldn’t have known where to put the camera, what to tell the actors because I have to find some way to make it personal to me.” 

To his surprise, the studio was not only open to hearing what kind of Batman movie he’d want to make but was willing to wait for him to finish War for the Planet of the Apes. His initial, story-less pitch was a highly emotional, post-origin tale that kept Batman at the center, and was connected to the DCEU without having to service it. That last part ended up being moot once Affleck dropped out of the movie altogether. “That’s when I started to think about a younger Batman who was beyond his origins but was imperfect,” says Reeves. 

A lifelong fan of the Adam West-starring Batman TV series from the ’60s (“I didn’t see the camp in it. I thought it was totally serious”), Reeves threw himself into writing. In terms of comics, he consulted the usual and oft-referenced suspects like Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli’s Batman: Year One and Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale’s Batman: The Long Halloween, which inspired 2008’s The Dark Knight. He also referenced slightly less obvious titles like Darwyn Cooke’s Batman: Ego (“Ego really gets into this idea of the beast within him and that struggle.”) Looking outside of the source material, Chinatown influenced The Batman’s municipal conspiracy, and the 1971 neo-noir Klute was a major reference point for Batman and Selina’s relationship, especially in how Donald Sutherland’s titular private investigator initially judges Jane Fonda’s call girl Bree Daniels. 

“I didn’t want to overly inflate [Reeve’s] ego about it, but I kept saying to myself, ‘Oh, I’ve never seen that,'” says producer Dylan Clark (War for the Planet of the Apes), as he recalls his conversations with the director during the scriptwriting phase. 

“It was a real departure from what we’d seen in the past, but at the same time, it was a throwback to the origins of the comics, which is grounded in mystery and detective work,” says Jeffrey Wright (Westworld), who plays Batman’s primary ally, Lieutenant Jim Gordon. The actor was also impressed by how timely the story was. “There’s an awareness of an instability within Gotham that I think is reflective of the times. There’s an awareness of certain class tension and pervasive distrust in Gotham. In the way that Matt shaped the Riddler here, it speaks to a kind of present-day virality that we see used for communication of certain ideas and propaganda.” 

For Reeves, it was important that the movie didn’t become about the villains; Batman had to remain the focus. “The Riddler is omnipresent, but almost as a ghost,” says Reeves of his Zodiac killer-inspired antagonist, who leaves personal messages for Batman at his crime scenes, thus robbing him of one of his biggest assets: his anonymity. “Batman or Bruce is in almost every scene in the movie” — similar to Jack Nicholson’s P.I. J.J. Gittes in Chinatown — “which is not the usual way these movies are done. It’s a very Hitchcockian kind of point of view where you are wedded to his experience.” 

Pattinson’s name came up early on during the writing process. “Good Time was a movie where [Matt and I] both went, ‘Wow,'” says Clark about Pattinson’s critically acclaimed turn as a morally-conflicted criminal in Josh and Benny Safdie’s frenetic 2017 crime thriller. “That’s a movie where he is displaying a lot of things that feel like Bruce Wayne to us.” Coincidentally, Pattinson wanted to play Batman and started pursuing the role on his own once he found out Reeves was attached.

“You’re always looking for the next challenge,” says the star, who avoided blockbusters after the Twilight saga and chose mostly indie projects like David Cronenberg’s Cosmopolis and Robert Eggers’ The Lighthouse. But there was something about this particular superhero movie that didn’t deter him. “The interesting thing about Bruce in this is that he hasn’t really got his playboy persona yet. He’s a freak as Bruce and a freak as Batman,” he says. “There’s a lot of madness in it. The character is going after a dream that’s completely impossible, and he can’t live his life any other way.” 

Kravitz was one of several names casting director Cindy Tolan presented to Reeves for Selina Kyle. Unlike Pattinson, Kravitz had no interest in a superhero movie — she’d already done X-Men: First Class — but the prospect of digging her claws into the complex antiheroine was tough to resist. “I really think that Catwoman would have been the only [superhero character] that I would ever consider, just because I feel really connected to her emotionally and also aesthetically. I think there’s an authenticity and an edge to her that I’m drawn to,” says Kravitz. 

“The characters are so mythic, and I wanted [them] to be very flesh and blood. She really understood that,” says Reeves, recalling their first pre-screen test meeting. “We had a connection right away.”

Kravitz was particularly drawn to how Selina is “an incredibly strong woman and doesn’t victimize herself,” she says. “We’re meeting her at a really pivotal moment in her life. I think her focus is really on freeing herself from a lot of hurt and a lot of trauma, and a lot of anger.”

Reeves’ version of Gotham City is seedy, dark, and rain-soaked, the sun only visible at dusk. The director wanted it to feel like it was a place where you could run into any character from the lore if you opened the right door. Hence, the inclusion of Selina and Farrell’s Penguin alongside mainstays like Lieutenant Gordon. In the same way that Selina hasn’t yet become Catwoman, Cobblepot isn’t a major crime boss, and Gordon hasn’t risen to commissioner. “The Riddler dubs himself the Riddler in this movie. This character hasn’t existed in the world yet, but he’s presenting himself,” says Reeves. “So I wanted this to be filled with all those little teases where the freshness of it was meeting the characters in ways you hadn’t seen yet. They weren’t yet the iconic mythic versions of what they become.” 

While Nolan’s trilogy at least wondered if there would come a time when Gotham wouldn’t need saving, no such hope exists in The Batman. Pattinson reveals that one of the first things we hear his character say is that things have only deteriorated in the city since he swooped on the scene. “He’s basically saying ‘I’ve been doing this for two years, and everything’s got worse.'” Adds Reeves: “Gotham is never not going to be corrupt, because it’s like our world.”

The silver lining to the darkness? There will always be more stories to tell. Even though The Batman is not set in the DCEU and was conceived as a self-contained story, Reeves hopes to continue expanding the world beyond the big screen. He’s executive producing two spin-offs in development at HBO: a drama about the Gotham City Police Department and another about the Penguin’s rise to power. 

“What I really wanted this movie to do was create a Batverse,” says Reeves. “You don’t do a story and go, ‘This is Chapter 1’ because you might not get to do Chapter 2. So, the story had to stand on its own. But the thing about it is that the Bat world is so rich with character that as you’re starting to come to an end, you can already start thinking about the next thing. Because the idea, of course, is that Gotham’s story never ends.” 

“It was one of the hardest things I’ve done in my life,” says Pattinson of The Batman’s protracted year-and-a-half-long shoot that began in Leavesden, England, in January 2020. Not just because of the unique challenges of acting in a Batsuit (“You’re almost puppeteering in a way — you have to really push through the mask”) but because of the many hurdles the film faced due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Like everything else, production shut down in March 2020. During the break, while Pattinson briefly experimented with microwavable pasta, Reeves and Clark reviewed the footage they’d already captured to reaffirm their faith in the director’s vision. 

They got the greenlight to resume that September; however, Pattinson contracted the virus, leading to another pause until he was cleared to return to work. “Once COVID hit, it was really difficult for us to get together off-set,” says Kravitz, adding that she and Pattinson had to depend on the script, Reeves’ guidance, and their natural connection to build their onscreen chemistry. Shooting The Batman wasn’t easy on the emotions either: This version of Bruce Wayne is one of the most fatalistic depictions yet, and since the movie doesn’t show the death of his parents, Pattinson strove to wear the enduring guilt and trauma on Bruce’s face in every scene. 

“Normally, I don’t have a problem [shaking a character off at the end of the day], but this was so all-encompassing. I just stayed in a hotel for the whole week right next to the studio because I’d have to get there at like 4:30 a.m. to start training, and then you’d train after, so you’d be finished at like 9:30 at night. You’re just constantly in that world,” says Pattinson. “When I look at photos of myself from the makeup test on the last day, I don’t even look human by the end of it. I look like I’m a piece of bubble gum that’s been stuck on the streets for like three years and has just been scraped off and put in a Batman outfit.”

Kravitz was ready to say goodbye to Selina by the end, too. “It was the solitude and the routine that was really hard,” she says. “I know all of us were in lockdown and it was intense for everybody, but I was away from home and completely isolated because of COVID and not wanting to get sick for the movie’s sake.” Some of that anxiety seeped into her performance: “It was really interesting to tell a story about a city in turmoil while the world was the way it was, or is right now. It made it almost easier to connect to the characters and understand how high the stakes are.” 

But now, here Kravitz and Pattinson are, almost a year after production wrapped, gazing into each other’s eyes at a glam photo shoot. It feels as though they were Batman and Selina yesterday, but also years ago. Perhaps that’s a good thing because they quickly overcome a brief fit of giggles on the first take of the motion cover, channeling their characters’ intense connection like they are back on The Batman set.

“There could be a lot going on in a scene, but if I was able to connect with Rob and look into his eyes, it would immediately bring me into the moment,” says Kravitz, who recalls Batman and Selina’s final scene in the movie. “I saw a look in his eye that I hadn’t seen before. Seeing something new and very vulnerable as well was really beautiful.” 

The Bat and Cat to the end. 

UPDATE: 16 February 2022 *UPDATED*

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New image of Rob and Zoe in Geek Magazine (Germany)

Thanks @Gossipgyal

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Thanks @sallyvg

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Thanks @CatwomanNation

UPDATE: 15 February 2022 – Den of Geek: Exclusive: Robert Pattinson and Matt Reeves reveal the secret origin of The Batman and how to make the Dark Knight fresh on the big screen after all this time.

UPDATED WITH SCANS

Thank you Monsieur_HJ

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From Den of Geek:

“You know the scene: the Batman stands before a gang of skull-faced goons who think this weirdo in a costume is a joke. “Who the hell are you supposed to be?” asks their leader, who’s about to find out, one punch at a time, that Robert Pattinson’s unhinged, hyper-violent Dark Knight is no laughing matter.

“How it was initially staged was the guy says, ‘Who are you?’ And Batman says, ‘I’m vengeance,’ and then beats everybody up,” reveals a much friendlier Pattinson, who cracks up while explaining how he helped tweak the scene to make it even more horrifying. “I said to Rob [Alonzo, second unit director and supervising stunt coordinator], ‘I really want to say it into the guy’s face when he’s basically dead.’” 

Savage beatings are one way this Batman wants to “spread around [his] mythology,” Pattinson tells Den of Geek by phone on a cold, gloomy day in January. “It’s not theatrical,” he says of the Dark Knight’s approach in the “vengeance” scene. “You just want someone to be terrified after it.”

…

“I didn’t want the arc to be ‘he becomes Batman and faces off with this particular rogues gallery character,’” Reeves explains. “I wanted you to see an imperfect Batman who would be driven to do what he’s doing in a way that was almost like a drug. He’s addicted to being Batman because it’s really an attempt to cope with those things in the past that we don’t see. I thought that was really fun to see a version of him that definitely hadn’t mastered himself, that was definitely in the process of becoming.”

To prepare for the role, Pattinson read nothing but Batman comics for months, even while shooting Christopher Nolan’s Tenet. A fan of Christian Bale and Michael Keaton’s portrayals of the character, Pattinson nevertheless planned to explore something new with his version. He found his way in through stories that took deep dives into the psychology of Bruce Wayne and the toll that being Batman had on his mental state.

“In the movies, Batman’s always been portrayed as quite practical, matter-of-fact, in the reasons why he becomes Batman, but in the comics, a lot of them are about quite esoteric subjects,” Pattinson says. “A lot of them he’s hallucinating and completely dissociating. That has not really been done so much in the movies.”

…

“The Bruce part of it in this movie is probably the most different because he’s a weirdo as Bruce and as Batman,” says Pattinson, who plays Wayne as a cold, slightly unkempt, recluse. “He’s fully committed to being Batman and he’s just not seen by the city at all… He has no desire to be Bruce in this and he wants to just throw it away. He thinks this is the way he can save himself, by living in this kind of Zen state as Batman, where it’s just pure instinct and no emotional baggage.”

…

“Every single person he is fighting is the person who killed his parents,” Pattinson says of the motivation behind Bruce’s nightly activities. But he also thinks there’s a part of Bruce that just enjoys the violence. “You’re going out every night fighting. You have to like it to some degree.”

Pattinson’s Batman is indeed a brawler, and that meant the actor not only had to get into incredible shape but learn how to actually pull off the brutal moves the Dark Knight employs in the film. He spent a lot of time working with Alonzo to master the long series of combinations needed for the movie’s many combat sequences.

“We based everything around [an] Indonesian style of fighting where you have these two sticks, and it all was based around movements with weapons, and then you take away the weapons afterward,” Pattinson says. 

But to actually perform these stunts, Pattinson needed a costume that offered more maneuverability and flexibility than past iterations of the Batsuit, such as the nightmarish, “boiling hot” Batman Forever costume he had to wear for his screen test. The Batman suit is a big improvement by comparison, according to the actor.

“I think I immediately started doing somersaults in it just because you could,” Pattinson says of the first time he put on a prototype of his costume. The actor was especially happy that he could move his neck in the suit, an issue that has plagued past actors in the role.

But the suit also had to fit the film’s “grounded” aesthetic. Since Pattinson’s Bruce doesn’t have a team helping him build all of his tech, his Batsuit had to look like something Bruce could make himself in the Batcave. 

“[The costume designers] really looked at stuff from the Vietnam War, military tactical stuff that one guy could put together and allow him to fight better,” says producer Dylan Clark, who previously collaborated with Reeves on the Planet of the Apes films. This movie’s pared-down Batmobile, which Clark describes as a “muscle kit car,” needed to evoke the same DIY, grease monkey spirit as the rest of Pattinson’s Batcave.

With the Dark Knight’s look and story arc now in place, it was time to turn to the other pivotal part of any Batman story: the villains.

To read more about Matt Reeves and the other characters click on link above.

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UPDATE: 14 February 2022 ~ Den of Geek: Robert Pattinson Reveals the Villains He Wants to Fight in a Sequel

Den of Geek interviewed Rob and this is what he had to say about villains he would be interested in fighting in the sequels:

In fact, we’ve already watched Pattinson dole out beating after savage beating in the trailers leading up to the movie’s release, but when we spoke to him for our The Batman cover story in the new issue of Den of Geek magazine, the actor was excited, even jovial, about where his Dark Knight might go next. Inevitably, the subject of a potential sequel comes up. While WB has yet to officially announce “The Batman 2,” Pattinson already knows which villains he wants to fight in the next movie.

“I’d love to do something like Court of Owls,” says Pattinson, referring to the 2011 DC Comics horror story about a hidden society that’s secretly ruled Gotham from an underground lair for centuries.

The storyline by the dynamic duo of Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo kicked off a new era of Batman tales that took the character to darker corners of Gotham City than he’d ever been before. The Court of Owls, a cult-like faction of criminals who wear owl masks and employ undead assassins to do their bidding, would certainly fit into the more Gothic feel of Reeves’ new Batman universe, according to Pattinson: “There are elements of The Batman which are kind of horror and I think it really feels quite new for Batman.”

The other villain on Pattinson’s wishlist? Calendar Man, the creepy, date-obsessed baddie who commits crimes based on holidays. He also plays the role of a Hannibal Lecter-like genius taunting the Dark Knight as he tries to find the serial killer terrorizing Gotham in The Long Halloween by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale, one of the major influences for The Batman.

But before Pattinson can truly turn his attention to owls or calendars, he first needs to deal with Paul Dano’s Riddler.

The sadistic, puzzle-solving masked killer inspired by the Zodiac Killer is not only on a quest to eliminate Gotham’s most elite citizens but to uncover the corruption at the heart of the city, one body at a time. Along the way, he digs up dark truths about the Wayne family that will shock Bruce to his core.

It’s the classic setup we’ve seen in many great comic book stories, a fight for the soul of the city and Batman’s own, but this is still all new to the World’s Greatest Detective played by Robert Pattinson. Only two years into his crime-fighting career, this Caped Crusader thinks he knows Gotham and understands his mission, but when the Riddler comes to town it makes Bruce lose his footing.

“[Bruce] thinks it’s his city in a weird sort of way. He thinks he’s kind of built it,” Pattinson says. But while Bruce has “the money and the castle,” he’ll learn the hard way that he has “absolutely no control or power over anything in the city.”

Riddler is far from the Dark Knight’s only problem in the upcoming movie. Pattinson’s Batman will also have to take on a who’s who of classic villains, including master cat burglar Selina Kyle (Zoë Kravitz), infamous mob boss Carmine Falcone (John Turturro), and freakish gangster Oswald Cobblepot (an unrecognizable Colin Farrell). It’s certainly the biggest challenge this Batman has ever faced.

13 February 2022

Allocine France interviewed Matt Reeves and the cast. I will link the interviews but only translate (roughly) Rob’s responses below and sometimes Matt talking about Rob. Click on links to read full interviews.

Part 1 – the approach of this reboot.

Matt Reeves (Director, co-writer): I wanted to take the character very seriously. It’s hard for me to tackle Batman with the pressure of having great movies before mine. What mattered to me, if I agreed to do it, was to find a way to be irrefutable about the reasons for making a new one. We’ve seen emotional stories about how Batman overcame his trauma, his origins, and his training and honing to become the Batman. … Robert’s approach is truly wonderful and there are a couple of moments in the film that result from that. Ultimately, The Batman is of course on the darker spectrum of what DC does in film. He tries to take the character seriously and relies a lot on this idea of ​​making people believe that the character could exist. Many superheroes have superpowers, but Batman is one of the few who doesn’t. Other than his obsessive will to do what he does and his ability to endure a lot.

And its resources. He comes from a rich family and therefore has the means to do all this. But other than that, he’s a real person. The darkness and dirt comes from making a thriller, an investigative film, which carries a form of darkness within it. But there is a bit of fun, related to the fact that the hero happens to be Batman.

…

Robert Pattinson (Bruce Wayne/Batman): [Creating the costume] was an interesting process in that capacity, where you talk about how you want to feel in it. I tried several individual elements and it remains something theoretical for a long time. And when we came to this final costume together, I remember trying it on and sitting around giggling. I felt like going to the mirror to see the result while growling (laughs) You almost feel like punching someone in the face (laughs) But it was a great experience.

Part 2 – Part two of our interviews with the cast of “The Batman”. This week, focus on the shooting, the realistic approach and the creation of this Gotham City. Made mostly in the studio according to Robert Pattinson.

Robert Pattinson  (Bruce Wayne / Batman): 90% of the film was shot in the studio, but the sets were incredibly immersive. About eight blocks of Gotham City were built in the Leavesden studios [in England, near Watford, where the Harry Potter films were filmed, editor’s note] , and it’s almost impossible to know if you don’t know. Especially since there was a railway line and lots of other similar things.

It was a very, very complete set. Very well cut. You’ll find it hard to believe these are studio sets when you see the film. But it is nevertheless the case. So much so that the members of the technical team, who were English, started speaking with an American accent because it felt like we were on a big street in Gotham (laughs).  But it’s so much easier to work like this: you arrive on set, and you don’t have to imagine the sets. There were very few green screens, and we also had this new technology.

UPDATE: 10 February 2022

New interview alert

https://twitter.com/DenofGeekUS/status/1491457068993495041?s=20&t=rm3dtnXyKwUlcpwZxL_Ktg

UPDATE: 4 February 2022

Looks like new photoshoot and cover is coming our way! Gimme gimme

https://twitter.com/QuixoteStudios/status/1489329506410192900

UPDATE: 3 February 2022

ESQUIRE MEXICO

Esquire Mexico has given us a new photo from The Batman promo (here’s hoping for more). Digital scan of article below.

Thanks Pattinson Photos

TOTAL FILM (3 February 2022)

Full scan and photos for Rob’s interview with Total Film interview is posted on a separate page, which you can read HERE. Other cast interviews below.

Thanks @Monsieur_HJ for scans.

UPDATED 1 February 2022 – various interviews and magazine scans- Total Film, MoviePlus, What’s On Dubai & Eiga (Japan)

Total Film shared three new images (click on pics above for HQ) and this excerpt from their exclusive interview with Rob:

Robert Pattinson had never auditioned for a comic-book movie – until The Batman.

“I was aiming for quite different stuff,” the actor tells Total Film over Zoom for the new issue of the magazine, available this Thursday. “Obviously it’s basically the jewel in the crown, of the parts you can really get as an actor. But I’d never really thought I was anywhere close to doing it, and especially with the other parts I was attracted to at the time.”

“I just kept obsessively checking up on it for the next year or so,” he says. “Even my agents were like, ‘Oh, interesting. I thought you only wanted to play total freaks?’ And I was like, ‘He is a freak!'”

Like many, Pattinson grew up fascinated by Batman/Bruce. “Out of all the comic-book characters and that kind of movie, I’ve seen every single one of the [Batman] movies in the cinema, which I can’t really say I’ve done for any other series,” he explains. “I was always really looking forward to them coming out. There was the combination of just being so attracted to it, but also feeling like it’d had a lot of movies made about it, and none of them are bad movies. People kind of shit on some of them, but they’re not actually bad. They all kind of completely achieve what they set out to achieve, and they’re all really interesting, according to their time and place. I don’t know. I just had a weird instinct about it. But I’ve always loved the character.”

Pattinson’s Batman movie, directed by War for the Planet of the Apes helmer Matt Reeves, won’t dwell on the character’s origins story, but that tragedy will fuel the character. “He’s got this enormous trauma inside him, and he’s built this intricate, psychological mechanism to handle it,” says Pattinson. “It’s like a really, really, really bad self-therapy, which has ended up with him being Batman at the end, as self-help,” he laughs.

Total Film is on sale from this Thursday, 3 February 2022. You can subscribe HERE or purchase a single copy HERE

Movie Plus “The Batman Interviews” and “In conversation with the stars of The Batman” What’s On Dubai

Below are scans from Movie Plus and Wat’s on Dubai thanks to @sallyvg

EIGA (Japan)

Eiga also shared their interview with Rob (translated via Google):

Pattinson responded to the interview and talked about Batman drawn in this work and his feelings about refraining from releasing.

This film focuses on the growth process of detective Bruce (Pattinson) who decided to live as Batman. Pattinson reveals that he has been an avid fan of the character Batman since he was a kid, and that the series so far have always been to the theater during the public week. Regarding his dream of playing a character, he said, “I wanted to do it very quickly, knowing that there was an opportunity to be involved in this film, and I wanted to do it more than nervously saying to myself, ‘It’s very scary to do this.’ It was a tough shoot, but I wasn’t particularly nervous at all. But I’m getting nervous now (laughs),” he explains.

‘All of a sudden I feel like there’s a very big bet, I hope everyone really likes it. “Batman” has been drawn in a different way many times, but this work is a completely different interpretation.I haven’t finished it yet, but I saw a Japanese work earlier. It was a very very (unprecedented) different tone. When I first started watching the movie, it felt nerve-wracking. It’s very interesting and I think everyone will enjoy it very much. Especially for longtime fans who have read a lot of graphic novels. In a sense it’s controversial. From my point of view, it’s the closest to a graphic novel, and I think it’s a very good idea, especially the interpretation of Batman’s characters.”

I had been preparing for this film about a year before I started shooting, but Batman had a hard time saying, “No matter how many ideas you come up with, everything will change when you wear a suit. “

“It’s difficult to try to express emotions while wearing a cowl (mask). The cowl itself has an expression, and the way the lighting is made changes, and it expresses completely different from the story that the actor wants to convey with his or her own expression. So, I had to learn how to interpret what kind of movement is interpreted so that I could learn a new language. It looks like a different expression with a little tilt of the head. Just by bending forward a little, it changes, and how can I get a sense of intimidation… It was hard just for the eyes to take a position to capture the lighting. You have to feel the light in various movements. If you wear a cowl, your eyes will be darkened, so you have to keep a good grasp of the light.”

Still, the suit seemed to be a great help in a deep understanding of the role, and he recalled, “As soon as I wore it, I felt that I needed a solid foundation for who the character I was playing.” “When he wears a batsuit, he’s no longer Bruce, Bruce disappears after wearing [the Batman suit]. And it took me a very long time to understand the complexity. I think everyone else who played Batman went through the same thing. It’s not until you wear a costume that you realize it and you also realize that you have to fight hard.”

Christian Bale , who played Batman in ” Batman Begins , ” “The Dark Knight ,” and ” The Dark Knight Rises,” directed by Christopher Nolan , happened to meet at a certain place and get advice.

“We met each other in the bathroom of the restaurant. I didn’t know he was there, but we were using the urinals next to each other. So he told me,” ( Wearing a Batman suit. ) It’s hard to go to the bathroom ”(laughs). That was his advice. As soon as you put on your costume, no one can say this to prepare. You can have a specific idea of ​​how you want to play ( Batman ), but once you’re in the set, there’s nothing you can prepare until you actually play it.”

Thanks @WayneG1939 for heads up.

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UPDATED: 29 January 2022

Matt Reeves tweeted today the Total Film covers (one for newsstand and one for subscribers). The issue hits the stands this Thursday, 3 February 2022.

The River (Japan)

The River released their one on one interview with Rob. I’ve translated it below using Google Translate:

The role of Batman / Bruce Wayne is one of the greatest roles in film history, comic history, and pop culture history. How long did it take to accept this offer when it came?

It was a prompt decision (laughs). Before I read the script, I met Matt (Director Reeves) and talked about how he intends to draw the character and how to redraw Gotham . I liked the idea, so I agreed long before I read the script.

Then, when I read the script, it felt like “it’s completely different from other movies.” It’s a really pure noir, a detective story, just like a graphic novel. At the same time, it’s also a flashy action movie, but it has a strong mystery / thriller element. It was like a serial killer movie, so it’s completely different from previous Batman movies (laughs).

The design of the new bat suit is cool. This suit design looks very functional. You yourself were involved in suit design, didn’t you?

By the time I joined, there was already some great concept art. Batman is no longer a soldier because he goes out every night and fights all night. When I first showed the suit design, the cowl (mask part) also had a gunshot wound and blood on it, which was great. Overall it was dirty and tattered and I felt like he was really fighting.

What makes this movie different is that there are many long-running conversation scenes. I also wear a suit there, and I have to express my emotions with the cowl. Therefore, it is necessary to express various expressions with a fairly delicate body language. With costume designer Jacqueline (Durin), I sought to see if it could move like a snake. For me, I wanted to move like an alien in the movie “Aliens” (laughs), but I wanted to incorporate a movement that would allow me to stretch my neck from my suit.

I think the suit is made to be quite easy to move. You can move gracefully, or you can make fluffy movements that are a bit like a ghost.

As for the suit design, Christian Bale of “The Dark Knight” said, “You should be able to go to the bathroom yourself” (laughs).

That! I just talked to Christian Bale himself (laughs). And, ironically, I happened to meet him in the bathroom and he told me there. That’s why the two of us were next to each other and peeed (laughs).

Well, is that true! (Laughs) When did you talk about that?

Immediately after receiving the offer (laughs). Please tell me at that time. And that was exactly what he said. Fortunately my suit was possible, but it seems that his suit wasn’t possible (laughs).

Your performance in “The Devil All the Time” (2020) was amazing. In this work, you co-starred with Tom Holland , who played Spider-Man. Did you talk to him about the role of superhero?

Did! Actually, we are quite close to our hometown in London. One day I went out to eat dinner together, and I talked to him for the first time there. The two of us got excited by talking about “It’s amazing that Batman and Spider-Man are together” (laughs). It’s hard to believe that this will happen when the locals are close to each other. It was a strange situation, but it was very satisfying.

It’s the best …! Do you want to continue playing the role of Batman?

(Lightly) Yes, by all means. I also love the story Matt draws. I also like the place where the characters end up in the movie. I think we can develop it in any way. It feels like a reinvention of the character, and a completely different view of the world is drawn. I’m really interested in what he does in the second film.

Batman in this work seems to be fighting for anger. However, I think it will take a huge amount of energy to continue fighting with anger as the driving force.

That’s right. If there is any enemy, energy can be obtained from it. It’s really unhealthy (laughs). After all, such energy turns into dark energy, which eventually hurt me. But Bruce has been accumulating pain for 20 years, and this time it will be released around.

For Bruce, being Batman is like a strange therapy in many ways. And I’m dependent on it. Perhaps his greatest fear is the mask being stripped off, revealing the fact that Batman is Bruce Wayne. It’s almost death to him. He fought that way as Batman.

So, that’s right, it requires a huge amount of energy. But he also receives a huge amount of energy (from the existence of the enemy).

In the trailer, a group like a gangster says, “What are you going to do?” And Batman says, “Revenge.” I didn’t say “justice”.

He didn’t think of himself as “justice” at that time. In the main story, I think Batman at this point didn’t even think that “this city will change.” I thought the city was in the midst of constant corruption. So what he’s doing is just an eye for an eye sanction. If someone does evil, he also does evil to that person. That was his own justice, but it’s completely different from true justice. That’s why it’s revenge. And revenge comes from something that is emotional.

Batman actors so far speak in a low voice when wearing Batman. (While doing a Christian Bale version of impersonation) “I’m not wearing hockey pads” (laughs). Is your Batman changing his voice too?

When I wear that suit, I really want to talk in a low voice! (Laughs) However, I don’t want to have the same voice as the other actors who were played earlier. It’s not as exaggerated as the other actors, but it definitely changed their voice. It’s … (speaking in a low voice for a moment, like being hung up by a mimicry, and immediately laughing and cheating). Oh, I have to practice. I can’t do it now (laughs).

Thanks @Monsieur_HJ for heads up.

UPDATED: 27 January 2022

Below are scans of a few pages from Premiere Magazine (France) and Cinema Magazine (German).

Premiere France

I translated two of Rob’s quotes from Premiere France using Google Translate. If anyone can clarify that would be appreciated.

Robert Pattinson “Something spoke to me about this character. And yet, I had never thought about it, I never even auditioned for a superhero movie. I was doing cinema completely the opposite and I was very happy to shoot strange films!

Robert Pattinson: There is this rule in Batman: he must not kill. It can be interpreted in two ways. Either he only wants to inflict the adequate punishment, or he wants to kill and his self-control prevents him from doing so! I considered it like this from the rehearsal of the first fight, I thought it was funnier: something in him just wanted to slit the guy’s throat! I told myself that if he spends his nights chasing criminals, it’s impossible that he doesn’t enjoy it. He is suffering and it is a desire that overwhelms him. And by the force of striking, his mind clears, he calms down, he reaches a state close to satisfaction.

Cinema Magazine (Germany)

Scans thanks to @sallyvg

UPDATE: 26 January 2022 – Empire UK and Deadline Magazine Germany (extracts below)

Matt Reeves was recently interviewed by EsquireUK, below are excerpts relating to Rob and how Matt came to create Rob’s The Batman from the 4 issue The Batman: Year One. Matt also confirms why he became “deadset” on Rob playing his Batman:

“Early on, when I was writing, I started listening to Nirvana, and there was something about [Nevermind song] ‘Something in the Way’, which is in the first trailer, which is part of the voice of that character. When I considered, ‘How do you do Bruce Wayne in a way that hasn’t been seen before?’ I started thinking, ‘What if some tragedy happened [ie: Wayne sees his parents murdered] and this guy becomes so reclusive, we don’t know what he’s doing? Is this guy some kind of wayward, reckless, drug addict?’ And the truth is that he is a kind of drug addict. His drug is his addiction to this drive for revenge. He’s like a Batman Kurt Cobain.”

“

Of course, the idea [to fit with the Year One story] was to make him a younger actor,” he says. “And in the process of writing the movie, I watched [the fantastic 2017 Safdie brothers film] Good Time, and I thought, ‘Okay, he’s got an inner kind of rage that connects with this character and a dangerousness, and I can feel this desperation.’ And I became dead-set on it being Rob. And I had no idea if Rob had any interest! Because, of course, he had done all of these indie movies after he established himself in Twilight.”

Unbeknownst to Reeves — or presumably anyone at DC — he had one thing on his side: Pattinson was a huge Batman fan. “He’d heard that we were doing this and got excited about the idea that there was going to be another version of this character,” Reeves says. “And so when I met him, and he read the script, we talked for a long, long time and I realised, ‘This guy is a massive fan’.”

Pattinson fit the part — but he still had to audition. Ridiculously, he did so in Val Kilmer’s old Batsuit. “Warner Brothers are like, ‘Look, we’re not going to make anything for somebody for a screentest’. But you go there [into WB] and they’ve got all the suits, going back to Michael Keaton. They said, ‘Look, we’ve done this on every single one. [Christian] Bale came in and he put on one of the original suits.’

“I’m not going to say it fitted well,” Reeves continues. “But it fitted the best. It was sort of old, and as he started acting, he started heating up the cowl and the cowl started to sag on his face. You could see him thinking, ‘How am I going to act in this suit?’ But putting on a Batman suit is also transformative. You start to feel the power of having that armour on.”

Completing the Grunge Gotham vibe, as the 31m people who saw The Batman trailer in its first 24 hours noticed, Pattinson’s Batman is wearing emo-eyeliner. What’s up with that?

“You can’t wear a cowl and not wear that. All of the Batmen wear that,” says Reeves, not entirely convincingly. “I just loved the idea of taking off [the mask] and under that there’s the sweating and the dripping and the whole theatricality of becoming this character.”

One of the things that makes the Batman character so interesting is that he’s so malleable. He can be campy Adam West from the 1960s or angry Christian Bale from the 2000s — and both are equally valid. By an overwhelming majority, the YouTube comments section is going crazy for the “I’m vengeance!” this-guy’s-nuts punchiness of Pattinson’s 2020s version, based on two or three trailers. But it’s fair to say that not everyone thought the skinny guy from Twilight was a stroke of genius casting.

“There has been no actor, when his announcement that he was going to be playing Batman in one of the feature films was announced, that has not received a backlash,” Reeves says.

“The people who were excited, I knew it was because they knew Rob’s work post-Twilight. The people who weren’t excited, I knew it was because they didn’t know Rob’s work post-Twilight.”

…

Reeves says it’s daunting but also hugely exciting to see his Batman come to life — he is days away from finishing the film when this interview takes place in late 2021.

“I’m very proud of it. I felt it was the best version of the story that we could possibly do to justify having another Batman,” he says. “You always have to have a reason, and from the beginning that was the mission for me.” Sequels and Gotham City-based spin-offs are being planned. It’s safe to assume they will remain Aquaman-free. At least for now. “It will obviously have a lot to do with how people receive this film,” Reeves says. “But a lot of things are in the works.”

Read the full interview by clicking on link above.

What was it like shooting the film during the corona pandemic? Rob: “It was a very intense experience. We were not allowed to leave the set during breaks or days off. Our lives only took place in the hotel or on the set itself.”

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https://twitter.com/Simply_RobPat/status/1486067846404874245?s=20

GERMAN DEADLINE MAGAZIN Interview translation thanks to @Simply – Robert Pattinson

“Batman and Catwoman have a very special relationship in the comics, which currently also includes a marriage. What will we see in #TheBatman : the beginning of a friendship, a romance or big trouble?

Zoe: “Trouble, a lot of trouble (laughs). Both characters sneak up on each other, get to know each other and try to assess each other.”

Rob: “Everyone has to struggle with their own pain, especially Bruce Wayne, who is particularly vulnerable in this regard. There are many situations where both characters are being very vulnerable.”

What is your opinion on the previous Batman films?

Rob: “The Batman franchise is probably the only one of which I’ve seen every film in the cinema. I even think I always went to the cinema on the opening weekend. Especially as a kid, I was a massive Batman fan who just loved the films. So when I heard that THE BATMAN was going to be made, I really wanted to be in it. It was an essential desire for me that drove me. When I was on set, I was amazed that I didn’t feel any nervousness. Everything felt so right. For me, shooting the film was like coming home.

Zoe: “I’ve never been a big comic fan, but I’ve always been able to get something out of the Batman films. It probably also has something to do with Batman being some kind of freak. I myself have often felt like a freak in the past and that’s probably why I was able to build a connection to the character.”

What was it like shooting the film during the corona pandemic?

Rob: “It was a very intense experience. We were not allowed to leave the set during breaks or days off. Our lives only took place in the hotel or on the set itself.”

Zoe: “That’s right, we lived in our own reality at that time. We were able to lose ourselves completely in our roles because there was nothing else for months.”

Was it difficult for you to play in the costumes?

Zoe: “For me, costumes are always an important part of my role as they help me to get into the role. They ensure that I move completely differently, even speak differently than I do in everyday life. At the same time, my costume was also a challenge because it was so tight on my body that I always needed helping hands to take it off. For example, I always needed an assistant to go to the toilet (laughs).”

Rob: “It was the same for me (laughs). The Batman costume demanded a lot from me. You have to believe in the costume when you put it on, otherwise you’ll look – and behave – like an idiot. However, the costume also leaves no doubt about the role, which gets you all the more in the role of Batman.” “I didn’t play Batman, I felt like batman.”

Zoe: “You were Batman when I saw you on set in costume I completely forgot who was behind the mask. I only saw Batman and that was so cool!”

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UPDATE: 22 January 2022

Rob as The Batman features on the cover of Première (France) upcoming issue number 526 which hits newsstands Wednesday 26 January 2022.  Below is an excerpt from Rob’s interview where he reveals the psychological state of his Batman (via Google translate):

“There is this rule with Batman: he must not kill. It can be interpreted in two ways. Either he only wants to inflict the adequate punishment, or he wants to kill and his self-control prevents him from doing so! I imagined it that way from the rehearsal of the first fight, I thought it was funnier: something in him just wanted to slit the guy’s throat! I told myself that if he spends his nights chasing criminals, it is impossible that he does not take pleasure in it. He suffers and it is a desire that overwhelms him. And by dint of knocking, his mind clears, he calms down, he reaches a state close to plenitude. I’m sure in this first fight, he manages to convince himself that every guy in front of him is the one who killed his mother (Laughs.) And so that allows him to vent all his rage. »

And Robert Pattinson to add: “  The interesting thing is that this Batman practically lives in the gutter. He’s nowhere at home except on the street when he’s wearing the suit. He lives a criminal life, but without committing crimes! I felt like I could get something out of that. Anyway, I could only play a superhero if he was really dirty! (Laughs.)  ”

UPDATE: 20 January 2022

Moviemaker shared their The Batman article today “A Detective Story: To Understand Matt Reeves and The Batman, Look to the 1970s“. Below are excerpts from Rob’s interview and comments made about Rob by Matt Reeves and Dylan Clark. I’ve also shared two new promo images. You should read the full article as it gives so much background into why Matt decided to make this film – I didn’t think it was possible to ramp up my excitement, but I was wrong:

“What everyone involved in The Batman mentions about director Matt Reeves is his specificity.

…

The details really do matter, says Robert Pattinson, who plays Bruce Wayne and Batman, two personalities who are painfully intertwined in The Batman. Pattinson says he was worried at first when Reeves would ask for a lot of takes.

“Your first thought is, Oh my God, I’m absolutely terrible,” he laughs, with trademark self-deprecation. But when Reeves would show him the playback of scenes, which Reeves likes to do, he began to see the same make-or-break nuances the director did. For example, the mask. The Batman cinematographer Greig Fraser, who also shot Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, told Pattinson early on: “The two most difficult things to light are Darth Vader’s helmet and the cowl.”

“There’s a whole different language, body language, you have to learn to make it do what you want it to do,” says Pattinson. “If you look too much into the light, it looks completely ridiculous, and you’re wearing a Halloween costume. But if you’re like two millimeters down, it’s like — oh, that’s completely totemic, and like it looks exactly how it’s supposed to look. But to learn how to feel that and learn how to react to how the light hits it, takes forever.

Every millimeter matters.

…

“I wanted to do a story in which the corruption of Gotham was one of the most important aspects of the story, because Gotham is a sick place. Bruce is desperate to try and make a change,” says Reeves. “He’s still stuck, to be honest, emotionally stunted at being 10 years old, because that’s a trauma you don’t get past—witnessing your parents murder in this place.

“He’s looking to create meaning, right? This is the only meaning he can find. …I think he imagines that if he can do this, somehow he can reverse what’s happened, which will never be reversed. This is a very human impulse, right? To try and relive something and remake it.”

…

Pattinson was impressed that all the detective talk wasn’t just lip service.

“In the first meeting, he was saying, we want to lean into the ‘world’s greatest detective aspect,’ and be a detective noir movie,” he says. “And, you know, normally when directors say that, they just do like a mood board, and it’s just about the imagery. But I read the script, and it is! It’s a detective movie. It happens all the time in the graphic novels, but it’s always kind of on the backburner in the movies.”

…

“Even in the early comics, there was something which I really liked,” says Pattinson. ”In a lot of the early tellings of it, he’s just sitting at home and a bat just smashes through the window, and he’s like, ‘That’s it!’ I’ll be a bat!’”

He laughs. “That doesn’t make any sense whatsoever.”

“The Batman script, Pattinson explains, finally embraces the madness. “There’s an element in the other iterations of the story where Bruce goes off, does his training, masters himself and then comes back to Gotham as a fully realized character and the delineation between Bruce and Batman — the public Bruce, the private Bruce, and the Batman Bruce — are very contained and he can control them more easily,” says Pattinson. “And in this, the lines have totally blurred. His self as Bruce is sort of disintegrating.”

After his massive breakout success in the Twilight movies, Pattinson took care to prove himself outside of big franchises. He disappeared into the role of a bearded, bespectacled, deeply beleaguered early 20th century explorer in James Gray’s 2016 film The Lost City of Z, and the next year played ferociously against type as a desperate criminal dirtbag in Josh and Benny Safdie’s mesmerizing crime thriller Good Time. Then he signed up for The Lighthouse, Robert Eggers’ slow-burn, black-and-white horror film.

Reeves and The Batman producer Dylan Clark took note.

“We’re like, he’s just making insanely bold choices, this guy. He went from being, very early on, in a giant franchise where he was a poster boy, to really pushing himself as an actor, working with incredibly talented directors and pushing himself all the way. And we just respected that,” says Clark.

When Ben Affleck, who had played Bruce Wayne/Batman in 2016’s Batman v Superman and the subsequent Justice League, decided not to go ahead with plans to direct and star in a solo Bat-film, Warner Bros. turned to Matt Reeves, who enlisted Clark to join him on the project.

Meanwhile, as questions swirled about who would replace Affleck under the cowl, Pattinson became fascinated by the idea of taking on the role.

What Pattinson didn’t know was that Reeves had begun writing The Batman with him in mind.

“Batman is an amazing myth that has endured for over 80 years,” says Reeves. “And it’s because of that crazy mix. There’s a part of it that is just simply cool, right? He looks cool. He’s got a cool car. He’s got all the stuff. He’s like James Bond, I guess, in a certain way, right? But there’s also something very relatable to the pain that he’s gone through.

“And so that, for me, was how you ground it — those aspects are part of the story. And this story emphasizes those things. This story pulls those things out. So that’s why I was so excited about Robert Pattinson because he’s such a wonderful actor. And I knew that he would be able to go on that search with me for the depth and complexity of this character. I mean, I knew he wasn’t going to play him straight ahead.

“In writing, from the beginning, I was imagining the character in my head. And I started watching movies of actors in the age range. And he just really kind of captivated me, and I started writing for him at a certain point. I had no idea if he ever would want to be in the movie.”

Reeves had spent many years resisting blockbusters, for fear of too many cooks and too many concessions to corporate demands. (“When the opportunity came to do Cloverfield, I said to J.J., I just want to understand why you want me to do this, because this fantastical part of it is not really the thing that I focus on,” says Reeves. “And he goes, ‘I know — you’re gonna make everything else real.”)

He worried that Pattinson might have a similar aversion to big-budget films.

“I’ve never auditioned for any comic book movies before,” Pattinson explains. “And at the time, even my agents thought it pretty out of character to just suddenly get fixated on Batman. And I didn’t even really know the status of the project.”

Around that time, Pattinson and Clark had a general meeting about potential collaborations, with no specific project in mind.

“We’re talking about 20 different things. And then he starts kind of saying, ‘So what’s going on with Batman?’” Clark says.

Adds Pattinson: “I had no idea that Matt had seen Good Time and thought, ‘I want to do a really dirty, dirty, slimy Batman.’”

“It was a kind of almost fated thing,” says Reeves. “Of course, at that point, we were still working on the script. And so there was nothing to share. But I met with him probably about eight months later, and I shared the script, and we just really connected.”

…

Interest in The Batman was so high that Pattinson set off a fandom kerfluffle when he self-effacingly told GQ, in an interview conducted from quarantine, that he wasn’t actually working out that much for the role. “I think if you’re working out all the time, you’re part of the problem,” he told the magazine.

He was being dryly funny, not that anyone noticed.

“That really came back to haunt me. I just always think it’s really embarrassing to talk about how you’re working out,” he says, laughing about it now. “I think it’s like an English thing. Unless you are in the most unbelievable shape, where people are just genuinely curious, going, ‘How have you achieved, like, physical perfection?’ or whatever.”

He further clarifies: “You’re playing Batman. You have to work out.” He laughs again. “I think I was doing the interview when I was in lockdown, as well, in England. … I was in a lower gear of working out.”

It’s not the first time an offhand comment from Pattinson has been taken too seriously.

“It’s the same thing as saying in an interview when I was like 21 that I didn’t wash my hair,” he laughs. “It just sticks for 15 years.”

The attention was nothing compared to the headlines in September 2020, when shooting resumed, then had to pause again because of a positive COVID test for an unnamed member of the production.

The production kept everything very tight when filming resumed.

“It was like a military operation,” recalls Pattinson.

“We had earpieces in to have direction a lot of the time to kind of limit the amount of interactions. The most odd thing is that a lot of scenes had no one behind the camera, because we were trying — if it was already a setup, they’d just be remotely controlling it. Odd. Especially when you’re on a big set — just no one around at all. That took a lot of getting used to.”

Pattinson remembers it being very busy, intense and dark.

“We were basically in night shoots the whole time. I can’t even tell if people were there or not. And also your peripheral vision inside the cowl — I could hardly tell if there was anyone there or not.

UPDATE: 19 January 2022

Thanks to Umberto Gonzalez from The Wrap | Heroic Hollywood we now know that Rob’s on the cover of The Batman issue of Moviemaker Magazine. There’s also a new interview. And Moviemaker tweeted this – stay tuned we will post as soon as we can:

https://twitter.com/RPAustralia/status/1483727663340859394

15 January 2022

Deadline Film Magazine (Germany) announced today that they are the first magazine to be able to give a deep insight into The Batman. The magazine is available on 26 January 2022 and as you can see from the cover has exclusive interviews with the cast. We will post Rob’s excerpt and any new photos once it becomes available in the upcoming weeks.