Batman has got to be the most visible and most popular superhero right now. Spider-Man is certainly a close second and Iron Man has his new found fans, but The Dark Knight elevated Batman to a level I am sure Warner Bros. never anticipated and it looks like one Batman just isn’t enough.
E! Online has a scoop that Armie Hammer, an actor that has seen a little bit of TV work on shows such as “Desperate Housewives” and “Veronica Mars” as well as a role in Flicka as Male Prefect, is next in line to play the caped crusader in the continuing attempts to bring the Justice League to the big screen in George Miller’s Justice League: Mortal currently rumored to be hitting theaters in 2011.
Of course, this gives Christopher Nolan and company more than enough time to hammer out a third film in the Nolan Batman Trilogy, such as a 2010 release with the start of the Justice League in 2011, but Hammer is going to be facing comparisons to Christian Bale the entire time.
E! caught up with Hammer and got the news straight from his mouth when he said, “That guy’s got his shit down,” referring to Bale, then jokingly adding, “My codpiece is bigger.” Hammer is currently shooting “The Reaper” for CW in Vancouver. Hammer has apparently been attached to the role ever since first being rumored as Batman discussing his early training in Australia for the part before production was shut down due to reported script issues and the lingering writers’ strike.
“I would spend hours training with actual guns to prepare me for this stuff,” Hammer said. “It was very intense. Our workout regimens were so rigorous that most of us would vomit. We weren’t trying to get ourselves aesthetically good looking. We were trying to get ready for the demands of shooting.”
I get anxious when thinking about these massive superhero films such as Justice League: Mortal and The Avengers, because unlike X-Men, these two films are taking major superheroes known by more than just comic book fans and tossing them into one film together. If it costs upwards of $150-250 million to make one big budget superhero movie how much will it cost to make one with all the superheroes? Where do you skimp if budget cuts must be made? The cast is where it looks like the cuts will be made with a tendency to bring in smaller name TV actors, but the superhero audience is proving to be a more sophisticated and judgmental audience than I believe studios originally believed. Will they buy into a CW-style superhero flick even if it has their favorite heroes? Just gonna have to wait and see.
