As one of the biggest movie stars on the planet for decades now, Matt Damon hasn’t had a shortage of big roles to choose from. Sometimes, though, the option was taken out of his hands by the powers-that-be. Appearing on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, he revealed how he lost out on being Batman’s sidekick, Robin – twice!
The first time Damon auditioned was for what ended up becoming Tim Burton’s Batman. While the Boy Wonder didn’t appear in any of Burton’s Batman flicks, it’s become movie trivia that there were plans to integrate him into the storyline at one point. As a matter of fact, Marlon Wayans was cast as Robin and paid for Batman Returns, even though the character didn’t appear in the film. Damon explained how he was one of the people in the running for the part as far back as the late ’80s.
However, he came much closer to getting the role in the ’90s when Joel Schumacher was at the helm of the Batverse. While Damon’s recollection of the timeline seems a bit hazy as he mentions auditioning in 1993 then discusses George Clooney’s Batman – which would have come after Val Kilmers’s Dark Knight in the mid ’90s – the fact is that he was considered for the part that Chris O’Donnell ended up playing.
According to Damon, he was one of the top three contenders to play Dick Grayson. “Chris O’Donnell already had the part, but they were haggling over money and the studio was flexing, basically, by flying in two other people to screen test,” Damon said. “They wanted Chris, but they just wanted him for a price.”
This wasn’t the only DC role that Damon lost out on either, as he confirmed he turned down the chance to play Harvey Dent in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight. According to Damon, he didn’t think it would be a major role, so he passed.
In terms of Marvel films, well, Damon also has a story of passing on a major superhero role – one that went to his BFF, Ben Affleck. Speaking to The Times, Damon opened up about considering the part but turning it down. “I would have done Daredevil,” he said. “Ben and I loved that comic book but I just didn’t quite believe in the script or the director at the time.”
Mind you, considering the stench that Daredevil left on Affleck’s career for many years afterward, Damon dodged a bullet there. In the end, the actor did make appearances in comic book movies, having small roles in Deadpool 2 and Thor: Love and Thunder, though it remains to be seen if he’ll ever have a major part in the genre again. Having said that, it would have been interesting to see what his version of Robin would have looked like in a Batman movie.
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