#Kurt Cobain inspired Robert Pattinson’s ‘Batman’: director

No actor nails angst like Robert Pattinson.

Matt Reeves’ “The Batman” won’t be like the other “playboy” Batmans we’ve already seen, the director said in a new interview with Empire magazine.

His inspiration — like that of Gen Xers everywhere — was Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain.

“When I write, I listen to music, and as I was writing the first act, I put on Nirvana’s ‘Something In The Way,’” Reeves, 55, told Empire. “That’s when it came to me that, rather than make Bruce Wayne the playboy version we’ve seen before, there’s another version who had gone through a great tragedy and become a recluse.”

The ’90s grunge god elicited something in Bruce Wayne not seen in Christian Bale’s refined rendition, Ben Affleck’s brooding portrayal or the quippier Caped Crusaders of yore.

“So I started making this connection to Gus Van Sant’s ‘Last Days,’ and the idea of this fictionalized version of Kurt Cobain being in this kind of decaying manor,” the filmmaker said.

The “Cloverfield” director also said that Pattinson, 35, had already shown himself fit for the role in the Safdie Brothers’ “Good Time” in 2017.

Said Reeves, “In that movie, you could really feel his vulnerability and desperation, but you could also feel his power. I thought that was a great mix. He’s also got that Kurt Cobain thing, where he looks like a rock star, but you also feel like he could be a recluse.”

Batman has come to be known as a suave socialite and high-tech gear heard in previous iterations, while Pattinson captures a misanthropic, alienated genius who lives as gritty as he looks. He described his Bruce Wayne as a shut-in who tinkers by day and brawls in a threadbare Batsuit by night

“Bruce has been hiding away,” the “Twilight” star said. “He’s not really a socialite at all. He’s building all these little contraptions and things, just with Alfred. And even Alfred thinks he’s gone insane!”

He continued, “He’s been out every single night for two years, getting beaten up and shot and stabbed and burnt, and it shows. There’s a bullet graze on the cowl, right at the beginning. I don’t think that’s been done before.”

It’s been more than two years since our new Batman was announced, and production has come along in fits and starts since March 2020 as pandemic health restrictions put the squeeze on Hollywood. In August of that year, cast and crew were again sent home — or, more likely, back to their quarantine hotels — from Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden in the United Kingdom for two weeks after their leading man tested positive for COVID-19.

The original theatrical release was slated for June 2021, then pushed to October 2021, before ultimately landing on March 4, 2022. Pattinson stars opposite Zoë Kravitz (“Big Little Lies”) as Catwoman, Colin Farrell (“Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them”) as The Penguin and Paul Dano (“Love & Mercy”) as The Riddler.