Christian Bale has revealed that he would only return to play Batman if Christopher Nolan asked him to reprise the role.
The actor may have hung up his cape and cowl when the Dark Knight trilogy wrapped, but he hasn't completely closed the door on the idea of suiting up as Batman again. During an interview with ComicBook.com, Bale admitted that he would consider returning to play the Caped Crusader on one condition: Christopher Nolan must be in the director's chair.
Despite his willingness to reteam with the Dark Knight trilogy director, Bale confirmed that Nolan nor anyone else had ever approached him about reprising his DC role. "Nobody, nobody reaches out to me or they keep me like a mushroom, keep me in the dark and feed me s***," Bale told the outlet.
"For me, that would be a matter of Chris Nolan, if he ever decided to do it again and if he chose to come my way again, then yeah, I would consider it because that was always our pact between each other is we would just stick to it," he then added. "We said we would only ever make three. And then I said to myself, and I'd only ever make it with Chris."
Bale portrayed Bruce Wayne/Batman in Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, and The Dark Knight Rises, which capped off the trilogy in 2012. Warner Bros. later pitched a fourth Batman movie to Bale, but he decided to turn it down out of respect for Nolan who had always envisioned his story as a three-film series and nothing more.
Bale is, however, pressing forward with comic book movies as he will soon be making his MCU debut as Gorr the God Butcher in Thor: Love and Thunder, which opens in theaters on July 8. Actor Chris Hemsworth has already gushed over Bale's performance in the movie, and director Taika Waititi has claimed that he's probably the MCU's best villain yet.
Adele Ankers-Range is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow her on Twitter.