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Speaking with Empire (via Comic Book Movie) for the outlet’s 2026 preview issue, Nolan recalled how he landed what David S. Goyer called the “consolation prize” of Batman Begins after he was unable to direct the Greek epic Troy. “I was originally hired by Warner Bros. to direct Troy,” Nolan said. “Wolfgang [Petersen] had developed it, and so when the studio decided not to proceed with his superhero movie [Batman vs. Superman], he wanted it back.”
Batman Movies Could Have Looked Very Different if Christopher Nolan Directed Troy
Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy is one of the defining film series of a generation, and it probably wouldn’t have even happened if Nolan was able to make Troy. In the early 2000s, Warner Bros. was ready to bring Batman back to the big screen, hoping to rebound from the disaster of Batman & Robin. While it was necessary to keep the Batman film franchise on ice for a period after that, the character was too popular and lucrative to stay on the shelf forever. Especially with superhero movies establishing themselves as reliable blockbusters (X-Men, Spider-Man), WB wanted to get in on the trend by making a new Batman.
This is all to say that if Nolan directed Troy, WB likely would have turned to someone else to reboot Batman. Waiting around for Nolan to be free after Troy wouldn’t have made much sense from a business perspective; the studio would have been sitting on a potential gold mine, and at this point, Nolan was unproven with big budgets. Giving him the keys to a mega franchise before knowing how people would respond to his blockbuster epic had the potential to backfire. If Nolan’s Troy underwhelmed, that would have set the Batman reboot back even further since a new creative team would likely come aboard. In this hypothetical scenario where Nolan helms Troy, someone else is calling the shots on Batman, which means no Batman Begins and no Dark Knight trilogy.
