We’ve been living most our lives wondering what Coolio as a Batman villain would be like. Haven’t we?
If you ever wanted to see Coolio take on the role of a Batman villain, you came pretty close to seeing that actually happen. You can blame the failure of Batman & Robin for never seeing that plan come together, apparently.
Coolio said he was promised to be cast as the main villain in the next Batman movie to come after Batman & Robin, in which the rap star had a brief cameo as the head of a bicycle gang. In an interview with The Burleson Star, Coolio claims the only reason he took that cameo role is because he was promised to be given the antagonist role in the next film in the Batman franchise
Because Batman & Robin with George Clooney and armored nipples and Arnold Schwarzenegger as Mr. Freeze was a legendary flop, Warner Bros. pulled the plug on any more Batman films until it was time to hit the reset button with Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy.
“I’m still sore about that,” Coolio said. “The next Batman, the villain was supposed to be Scarecrow and I was going to be in that part.”
As noted by Screen Rant, the news of Coolio taking on the role of Scarecrow is noteworthy because it had previously been believed Nicolas Cage was going to take on the role. Maybe Coolio was promised the role at the time he accepted the cameo appearance in Batman & Robin, and maybe Cage would later be the actor preferred by the studio.
Obviously, that Batman film never saw the light of day. However, one of the next villains in a Batman film ended up being Scarecrow, played by Cillian Murphy in Batman Begins.
