Robert Pattinson and Nicholas Hoult are on shortlist for The Batman

The battle for the Bat.

Prepare your outrage, we are nearing the announcement of who will be our next Batman and it’s sure to ruffle many feathers. Several sources are reporting that Twilight’s Robert Pattinson will play Bruce Wayne/The Dark Knight himself in Matt Reeves’ The Batman which is slated for release in 2021 but it may not be finalized quite yet.

The film is still currently in the script phase but at least one draft has been completed and is being polished as they prepare to shoot at the end of 2019/early 2020. Variety broke the news this evening by announcing that Pattinson was tapped by Reeves to play The Caped Crusader for WB’s soft-reboot of their most prized character.

Deadline then followed up shortly after by saying Pattinson is being eyed but no casting choice has been made official yet. The shortlist of actors for Batman contains Pattinson and X-Men’s Nicholas Hoult but no other names have been noted at this time.

The character has a strong history of controversial castings going all the way back to Michael Keaton and he’s widely regarded as one of the best to don the cape and cowl. Scrutiny continued over the years with the likes of Ben Affleck and even Heath Ledger as The Joker who won an Oscar in the role in the end.

While many know Robert Pattinson for his Twilight roots, he has been quietly working on incredible indie films for many years such as Good Time and High Life. The actor has quickly become one of the most notable people working on lower budget critical darlings this past decade after rising to fame with Twilight.

While WB, Matt Reeves, or the actors rumored for the role have not made any comment at this time, we’ll be sure to update this story when we hear more about the official casting of Batman.