Shocking! 'This' actor who portrayed The Joker was to play Batman before Robert Pattinson

Robert Pattinson may be the latest actor to don the famed cape and cowl, but Darren Aronofsky and Warner Bros. had their own insane choices when it came to choosing who would play Batman.

Reportedly, Darren Aronofsky has previously said that he wanted then-future Joker Joaquin Phoenix to play the Caped Crusader in his aborted early-2000s reboot, but in a new interview with Empire magazine, the filmmaker finally revealed who Warner Bros.' pick for the role was.

"The studio wanted Freddie Prinze Jr. and I wanted Joaquin Phoenix," Aronofsky said. "I remember thinking, 'Uh oh, we're making two different films here.' That's a true story. It was a different time. The Batman I wrote was definitely a way different type of take than they ended up making."

If true, it would have been an insane choice, but it would have been fun to watch it unravel.

It is still a surprise that after the campy debacle that was "Batman and Robin," Warner Bros. would still make such a surprising choice about who would play Batman.

Freddie Prinze Jr. was a rising star in the late 90s and the early 2000s, perhaps that factored into their decision.

However, he might have been a tough fit in the dark version of Batman that Aronofsky seemed to be going for.

In fact, it was even too dark for Frank Miller, the legendary comic writer who penned the iconic "Batman: The Dark Knight Returns" comic.

"It was the first time I worked on a Batman project with somebody whose vision of Batman was darker than mine," Miller told the The Hollywood Reporter in 2016.

Now we'll just have to wait and see what Robert Pattinson brings to the role.