I don't care who you are, $50 million is a lot of money. Even a billionaire playboy like Bruce Wayne shows up to collect $50 million. And it would certainly be impossible for a Hollywood actor, even one with a net worth of $120 million, to reject a $50,000,000 paycheck. And yet, that's exactly what Christian Bale did. And he did it for the craziest reason ever. Christian Bale apparently rejected $50m out of loyalty to Christopher Nolan.
Christian was offered that massive payday to get him to step back into Batman's cape and cowl for one more adventure following the close of the "Dark Knight" trilogy, which were all directed by Christopher Nolan.
The $50 million figure seems to come from a writer named Vincent Russel and his 27-page book "Beyond Batman: The Unauthorized True Story of Christian Bale and His Dark Knight Dilemma." According to the book, when Warner Bros. was working on a "Justice League" film, they were willing to pay Bale $50 million to appear in it, and only for about 20 minutes of screen time.
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Given the sums involved and Bale's popularity as Batman, it's not unthinkable that WB would be willing to put up such a figure to bring Bale back to the Batcave. While Bale himself has never confirmed the precise offer made to him, he did discuss his decision to call it quits following "The Dark Knight Rises" in an interview with The Toronto Sun, although he does characterize it a bit differently:
"Then when they inevitably came to us and said, 'How about a No. 4?' I said, 'No. We have to stick to Chris' dream, which was always to, hopefully, do a trilogy. Let's not stretch too far and become overindulgent and go for a fourth.'
"That's why we, well Chris, stepped away. After that I was informed my services were no longer required (laughs)."
Whatever the precise circumstances may have been, it seems probable that after three successful films starring Christian Bale as Batman, the studio would have paid almost any amount of money to have Bale back in the part when they were trying to get a "Justice League" franchise to catch fire.
Ben Affleck ended up being the next Batman, followed by Robert Pattinson, who in a strange coincidence gave an audition for the role during production on "Tenet," directed by, that's right, Christopher Nolan. Evidently he had no qualms about playing the role without Nolan involved behind the camera.
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