George Clooney says there are 'not enough drugs in the world' to get him back as Batman

George Clooney isn’t exactly rushing to don his Batsuit again.

As die-hard DC fans will recall, the actor who first became Bruce Wayne for the 1997 film Batman & Robin unexpectedly reprised the role for a cameo in this year's The Flash. Was that reappearance the first of many? Not according to Clooney.

At the Los Angeles premiere of his latest directorial venture, The Boys in the Boat, Clooney addressed the question of his potential return to the DCEU.  “I don't think there are enough drugs in the world for me to go back again," Clooney told Entertainment Tonight.

He further joked that he only returned for The Flash because he assumed fans were dying to see him again.

“I thought there was such a clamor for me to come back as Batman, as you know. There was a clamor," Clooney said, lampshading the movie that was famously panned by critics and audiences alike. "I actually said, 'Where are my rubber nipples?' And they were like, 'Can we do it without the rubber nipples?' I was like, 'Well, it's not really my Batman, is it?'"

The Clooney sass should come as no surprise to Batman fanatics. The actor has never held his tongue when it comes to criticism of the 1997 comic book caper. He once joked that he would never show the movie to his family, lest his wife lose respect for him, and in 2020 bluntly told Howard Stern, “Akiva Goldsman — who’s won the Oscar for writing since then — he wrote the screenplay. And it’s a terrible screenplay, he’ll tell you. I’m terrible in it, I’ll tell you.”

His personal reservations aside, driving the Bat-mobile one more time would probably help the actor’s street cred within his own household. When he appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live last week, Clooney recounted the way his son once roasted him for his Bat-tinged past.

“My son is in love with Batman. Right? He’s in love with Batman. That’s all he talks about is Batman,” Clooney explained. “And I’m like, ‘You know I was Batman? And he’s like, ‘Yeah, not anymore.’ He has no idea how right he is.”

As the audience laughed, Clooney lamented, “How do you tell your 6-year-old son that Batman had nipples?”

The DC Universe is currently in the midst of a full-fledged overhaul courtesy of co-heads Peter Safran and James Gunn. They have more than enough Batmen to choose from — Robert Pattinson will reprise the role in The Batman Part 2 and there are also plans for a separate Batman film from The Flash filmmaker Andy Muschietti. All this to say that Clooney’s nipple-suited Batman probably doesn’t have a future in the DCEU… unless he really wants to impress his son.

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