Loading

ENTERTAINMENT

Christian Bale: Robert Pattinson ‘Good Choice’ for Batman (Watch)

By Variety Staff

LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – Christian Bale seems extra-pleased with the casting of Robert Pattinson as the next Dark Knight. Speaking to Variety at the Toronto Film Festival on Sunday, Bale gave a thumbs up when asked about Pattinson joining the Bat family.

“Good choice! He’s interesting,” Bale said. His “Ford v. Ferrari” co-star, Matt Damon, agreed.

“Did you see the Safdie brothers movie he did?” Damon asked. “He was fantastic.”

Bale, who toplined Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy in the late 2000s, has spoken before about the labor-intensive process of getting in and out of the Batsuit, which can take the assistance of several crew members.

Does he have any advice for Pattinson?

“Oh, same as Ben (Affleck), just be able to pee by yourself,” he said. “You don’t feel like a superhero when you aren’t able to piss by yourself.”

In “Ford v. Ferrari,” Bale and Damon star as racing legends Ken Miles (Bale) and Carroll Shelby who together built a revolutionary race car for Ford Motor Company in the 1960s.

“We really focused on putting you in the point of view of the drivers,” said director James Mangold. “I didn’t want it to look like what you see on a sports telecast.”

Did Bale and Damon perform their own racing stunts?
“We drove cars that were kit cars that have the engine of like a Mazda Miata,” Damon laughs. “But they went pretty fast. The real GT 40s that have survived from that era are $25 million cars that are now in museums.”
Bale added: “I’d love to say ‘Oh man, we did our own driving,’ but I have to keep reminding myself: I’m acting as if I know what I’m doing, and we had some of the best racers and drivers in the world. If we had been doing the driving, those racing sequences wouldn’t have been nearly as exciting.”

“Ford v. Ferrari,” which is screening at the Toronto Film Festival, races to U.S. theaters on Nov. 19.

The Variety Studio at the Toronto Film Festival is presented by ATT.

tagreuters.com2019binary_MT1VRTP0JWFKSJ-FILEDIMAGE

MOST POPULAR