Richard Armitage Auditioned For DCEU Batman

Richard Armitage revealed that he was in the running to play Captain America: The First Avenger but has yet to make a DCEU appearance.

Once Christian Bale hung up his cape and cowl upon the conclusion of Christopher Nolan's Suicide Squad to boot.

However, the situation could have been very different indeed. Speaking with Digital Spy, Armitage revealed that he came very close to playing the DCEU's Batman and was deep into the audition process before ultimately being turned down. The actor states:

"There was a little flurry once upon a time just after I'd come out of The Hobbit where I auditioned for Batman, it was at the same time that Christian Bale was leaving, there were about five or six actors that were in line for that character, so I went through quite a process with that."

Thorin Oakenshield standing in an open field in The Hobbit

Armitage showed enough brooding, heroic anger as Thorin Oakenshield and Spooks' Lucas North to suggest that he would've had the tools necessary to play the Caped Crusader and both of those characters could be described as having a sometimes skewed sense of justice, similar to Batman. Armitage is also around the same age as Affleck and undoubtedly could have provided the kind of older, jaded version of Batman that has been featured in the DCEU thus far.

This revelation perhaps begs the question of whether or not the casting of Armitage would've attracted the same level of anger from fans as Affleck's ultimately did. Given that the Brit has the appropriate physical appearance (a sort of upper-class ruggedness, perhaps) and hasn't appeared in the cinematic duds that often mark Affleck out as a figure of ridicule, it seems distinctly possible that the DC fan base would've been more receptive to Armitage than Affleck.

Whether Armitage's performance would've been deal with Disney goes through and Armitage has already lent his vocal talents to that legendary character.