Before Aquaman, Jason Momoa initially auditioned for the role of Batman in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.
When talking with Chicago Fox 32 reporter Jake Hamilton, Momoa details his idea of Batman. Spoilers: it was kinda weird. Here’s Momoa about how he approached Batman in the audition process.
Yeah, I kind of visualized, because it was a generic kind of just general scene from the Christian Bale movie The Dark Knight and I just, it was a big casting call so I knew a lot of people were going to be doing it and I just felt like it was a booby trap and I just didn’t want to do it.
So, we did it and I just pretended like Batman got killed in an alleyway and I picked it up and tried to play him like I was just down and out, poor, over it, just done wrong and he wasn’t afraid to punch even good people in the face. And just go, like, unforgivable about certain things but also like flawed, like the kind of person who would jump off a cliff and figure out on the way down what we’re going to do.
Rise of Aqua-Bat
From the description, it sounds like Momoa was going for a nothing-to-live-for, suicidal Batman. Making it doubly strange is that Momoa was reading lines from The Dark Knight, which features, despite the grittiness of it, a very hopeful Batman. Can you imagine Momoa trying to play a suicidal Batman, while probably reading lines like: “You’re garbage that kills for money!”?
Even crazier, can you imagine somebody watching that audition and think, “You know who his Batman reminds of? Aquaman!” Well, somebody did. And that somebody was Batman v Superman director Zack Synder. Momoa on how his Batman auditioned eventually parlayed into getting the role of Aquaman.
So, they liked that and then I got called in about probably two to three weeks later and that’s when Zack laid it down and said “I want you to play Aquaman”, which was completely like “Excuse me?”
What an odd turn of events to go from Batman to Aquaman. Still, it maybe fortunate, since Aquaman looks amazing. For more of the interview and other Aquaman cast interviews, check the video below.
Aquaman hit theaters December 21, 2018.
