Leonardo DiCaprio Could’ve Been a Perfect Villain in Christopher Nolan’s Trilogy

Summary:

• Leonardo DiCaprio collaborated with Christopher Nolan once for the latter’s Inception, but the actor’s candidacy was strongly recommended by Nolan’s other very famous film.
• Though DiCaprio didn’t know it, Warner Bros.’ executives wanted to see him in a supervillain’s role.
• Eventually Nolan ended up choosing a different villain and a different actor, but the match with Leonardo DiCaprio could’ve never happened anyway because of the actor’s professional preferences.

Leonardo DiCaprio has famously worked with Christopher Nolan on the latter’s science fiction thriller Inception, but their first collaboration could’ve actually happened a couple of years earlier than it eventually did.

Back in the day when Christopher Nolan was all over his immensely successful trilogy The Dark Knight, DiCaprio was one of the main challengers in the pace for a supervillain’s role — but the actor’s personal preferences wouldn’t let it happen anyway.

Though Leonardo DiCaprio didn’t really know about it himself, he was seriously considered for The Riddler’s role in Nolan’s third film of the trilogy.

After the first two films proved to be real money-makers and something that the viewers will definitely be thrilled about, Warner Bros.’ executives ascribed such a tremendously warm welcome to a big role of villains portrayed by well-known actors — especially after Heath Ledger’s Joker became a true legend in the history of cinema.

As the writer for all the movies of the trilogy, David S. Goyer, revealed on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, the head of Warner Bros. reached out to him at The Dark Knight’s world premiere asking him to talk Nolan into casting DiCaprio as The Riddler.

Goyer then clarified that it wasn’t the way Nolan could work as the director would never choose an actor before having a role meticulously elaborated in the script.

After all, Nolan even opted for a different villain — both he and Goyer thought that it was Bane who could perfectly fit in the third movie contributing to Christian Bale ’s Batman ’s end of the story. As the writer also highlighted, Nolan and the studio then didn’t have any issues despite disagreements.

Despite the high chances of Leonardo DiCaprio’s potentially brilliant portrayal of the DC’s villain if he had landed the role back then, the chances that the actor would have agreed for this are incredibly low.

DiCaprio is known for his challenging and physically difficult roles that’s not within everyone’s grasp and his opinion about appearing in superhero movies was pretty clear ever since his career started — they’re not what DiCaprio would like to work on.

Suffice it to say that major studios have been sending him numerous offers about money-bag roles in such films — instead they got their offers back with a firm rejection.

What may console everyone at this point is that DiCaprio isn’t irreplaceable here — and while others get to portray superheroes or supervillains, the actor opts for the roles that only he can handle.

Source: Happy Sad Confused Podcast