Robert De Niro got offered Christopher Dent in The Batman Part II and said no. At this point, the rejections on this role are their own headline, and the film hasn’t even started shooting yet.
Nobody Wants This Part and the Cast Is Probably Why
Jeff Sneider broke the news on March 18, 2026. Mattson Tomlin, who co-wrote the script with Matt Reeves, went on X right after and posted “lolololololol.” Not a denial.
De Niro isn’t the first to walk. Brad Pitt said no. Stellan Skarsgård said no. Daniel Craig said no and went off to do a Damien Chazelle movie with Cillian Murphy and Michelle Williams instead. Four big names, all passed on the same role.
Christopher Dent is Harvey Dent’s father, and he’s the main villain of the film. The setup has Batman, Harvey Dent, played by Sebastian Stan, and Commissioner Gordon, played by Jeffrey Wright, going after a serial killer and Gotham’s mob together.
On paper, it’s a solid villain role with real weight to it. The issue is that everyone else is already locked in. Scarlett Johansson, Colin Farrell, Barry Keoghan, Paul Dano, Andy Serkis, Jeffrey Wright, and Pattinson.
Whoever takes Christopher Dent is coming in as the ninth or tenth name on a very packed call sheet and probably not walking out with the most screen time. At that level, that calculation doesn’t always add up.
Matt Reeves is directing, and his track record with this franchise is hard to argue with. The 2022 Batman made $772 million and ran three hours, and people were fine with it. Dark, detective-driven, and a completely different energy from every Batman movie before it.
The Penguin series on HBO kept that world going, and the audience stayed with it. Part II has serious expectations behind it, and Reeves has said this one takes Bruce Wayne somewhere no Batman film has gone before. The hype is real, and the pressure is real too.
De Niro did Joker back in 2019, so it’s not a genre thing. Just wasn’t for him this time around.
Filming kicks off in London at the end of May. The role still isn’t cast, and the clock is moving.
