Heat 2 has officially cast Oscar winners Christian Bale and Leonardo DiCaprio as its leads.
While their respective roles remain a mystery, both actors have confirmed they will star in the sequel to the 1995 crime drama.
Michael Mann, who directed the original, will helm the first collaboration between Bale and DiCaprio. However, more than a decade ago, the duo almost faced off against each other in one of the most iconic DC Comics movies.
Leonardo DiCaprio almost played the villain opposite Christian Bale
Image credits: Dominic Lipinski/Getty Images
Christian Bale played the lead role of Bruce Wayne/Batman in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight trilogy.
Following Heath Ledger’s Oscar-winning turn as the Joker in The Dark Knight, Leonardo DiCaprio was almost cast as the villain for the third installment.
Writer David S. Goyer, who worked on the trilogy, confirmed this during an appearance on the Happy, Sad, Confused podcast in 2023. He revealed that the Warner Bros. head at the time personally pitched him the idea at the premiere of The Dark Knight in 2008.
Image credits: Warner Bros.
Goyer recalled the studio head telling him, “You’ve got to do the Riddler. Leo as the Riddler. You’ve got to tell Chris, Leo as the Riddler.”
Despite interest from the studio, Goyer never took the idea to Nolan, as it was against their method of working together. Nolan later collaborated with DiCaprio on 2010’s Inception before reuniting with Bale for The Dark Knight Rises, which featured Tom Hardy as the villain Bane.
The Dark Knight director Christopher Nolan cited Heat as a major influence
Image credits: Arnaldo Magnani/Getty Images
Heat 2 can be seen as a spiritual successor to Nolan’s The Dark Knight trilogy. It can finally give fans the long-awaited showdown between DiCaprio and Bale, if the latter is cast as the younger version of Al Pacino’s Detective Vincent Hanna.
In a 2007 interview with IGN, Nolan revealed that Mann’s 1995 classic heavily influenced his approach to crafting the fictional city of Gotham for The Dark Knight.
“That was sort of an inspiration. If you want to take on Gotham, you want to give Gotham a kind of weight and breadth and depth in there,” he said.
Image credits: Warner Bros.
Moreover, the famous interrogation scene between Batman and the Joker was reportedly also inspired by the coffee shop scene between Hanna and Neil McCauley in Heat.
If Bale plays Hanna and DiCaprio is cast as either McCauley or Chris Shiherlis, the same psychological thrills and cat-and-mouse chase between Batman and the Joker can be recreated on the big screen, bringing Nolan’s vision full circle.
Christian Bale thanked Leonardo DiCaprio for unintentionally making him a star
Image credits: Robin L Marshall/Getty Images
While Bale and DiCaprio will most likely be on opposite sides of the law in their highly anticipated first collaboration, their careers have been intertwined for more than two decades.
The role of Patrick Bateman in American Psycho, which became Bale’s breakout performance, was initially offered to DiCaprio. Years later, Bale was reportedly the first choice for The Revenant, which eventually won DiCaprio his first Oscar for Best Actor.
In a 2022 interview with GQ, Bale reflected on being the second choice to DiCaprio throughout his career. The 52-year-old revealed that most filmmakers he worked with initially offered their lead characters to the Titanic star, but he never took that personally.
“I can’t do what he does. I wouldn’t want the exposure that he has, either. And he does it magnificently. But I would suspect that almost everybody of similar age to him in Hollywood owes their careers to him passing on whatever project it is,” Bale said.
Heat is currently streaming on Hulu, while The Dark Knight trilogy is available on HBO Max.
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