Jake Gyllenhaal throws name in ring to play Batman: ‘It would be an honour’

Jake Gyllenhaal has expressed enthusiasm at the prospect of being cast as the next Batman.

Gyllenhaal said “it would be an honour” to play Gotham’s Dark Knight in an interview on Monday (18 March).

In January 2023, James Gunn, the co-chief executive of DC Studios, announced 10 new projects that will serve as a reboot of the cinematic DC Universe franchise.

One of the planned releases is a new Batman feature titled The Brave and the Bold – and Gunn confirmed a new actor will be cast in the lead role.

During an event promoting new action-thriller Road House, Gyllenhaal, who was in the running to play the Caped Crusader in Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins, was asked by Screen Rant if he would play the role should Gunn ask.

The star said: “It would be an honour always. Those types of things and those roles are classics.

“I’m going to play Iago in Othello with Denzel Washington, and I think about the history of actors that have played that role throughout time, and I’m intimidated by that.”

Gyllenhall will feature in the forthcoming Broadway show alongside Denzel Washington, who will play the lead role. The show is set to begin in 2025.

Batman has been played by Adam West, Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer, George Clooney and Christian Bale, who beat Gyllenhaal to the role in Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy. More recently, Ben Affleck and Robert Pattinson have played the role, with Pattinson set to return as the character in a sequel to 2022’s The Batman.

The Batman Part II was recently pushed back by a year, and now has a release date of 2 October 2026.

Should Gyllenhaal ever be cast as Batman, it would not be his first time starring in a superhero film. In 2019, he played the villainous Mysterio in the blockbuster Spider-Man: Far from Home.

There is currently no set date for The Brave and the Bold , with Gunn saying that a script is yet to be finalised in an update posted on Threads last December.

Gyllenhaal can be seen in Road House on streaming platform Prime Video from March 21 2024.