The star of Breaking Bad, Aaron Paul, has revealed that he almost participated in Christopher Nolan’s superhero trilogy, The Dark Knight. Nolan’s Batman trilogy consists of Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, and The Dark Knight Rises, but Paul doesn’t confirm which of the films he would have been in: “I was literally shooting another project, and I couldn’t do it. It was a tiny, tiny, tiny role.”
The actor who portrayed Jesse Pinkman in the Vince Gilligan series, co-starring Bryan Cranston, recently sat down to chat with Screen Rant. Paul is currently promoting his new video game Dispatch, but he also used the opportunity to reflect on one of his missed chances to enter the superhero genre. When talking about Nolan, Paul says that he “just wanted to be in his universe”:
“I sat down with Christopher Nolan on another project. This was years ago. I think it was for Interstellar, but I was offered a very small role – you’re literally just reminding me of this — in one of the Batman movies he was doing. I was literally shooting another project, and I couldn’t do it. It was a tiny, tiny, tiny role, but I don’t care.
“I love Batman. I think Batman’s probably my favorite, because he’s kind of a real guy, right? He’s just the guy with a lot of money and a lot of toys, and he’s not messing around. I love Superman, I love it all. It’s just such a fun, fantastic world where the options are sort of limitless.
“Just watched Dark Knight the other night. I thought about that. I was like, ‘Ah, it would have just been so cool to just be in 30 seconds of one of those movies.'”
The conversation Paul is talking about likely took place around the time he entered the Hollywood spotlight with his role in Breaking Bad. In 2008, the same year the crime series premiered, Nolan released The Dark Knight, the second in the trilogy. Although Paul indicates it would have been a small role, it would surely have been interesting to see him in the superhero genre, and under the leadership of one of modern cinema’s most important directors.
When Is Batman Returning to the Big Screen?
The caped crusader with a strange fascination for bats (and lots of money) will return to the big screen in the near future with not one, but two depictions of the classic crime-fighting vigilante. Although he is one of the most popular superheroes in modern culture, Warner Bros. has not released another Batman movie since 2022’s The Batman.
James Gunn’s DCU will feature a new Batman, and he will likely return in the franchise’s future entry of The Brave and the Bold. The DC Comics superhero will also return as part of the Elseworlds universe, in the upcoming sequel that follows Matt Reeves’ side of the story. The Batman Part II will continue the adventures of the Dark Knight under Reeves’ bleaker neo-noir vision, and is set to start shooting sometime in 2026.