Before Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Ben Affleck’s casting as the new Dark Knight were announced, there were unconfirmed rumors that Christian Bale would have a role to play in the DC universe moving forward. As it turns out, director Zack Snyder did consider getting the previous Batman for a role in the Man of Steel sequel — it just wasn’t as The Dark Knight.

Speaking with Australian film website, FilmInk, the director revealed he had discussions with the actor, but didn’t discuss what role he was specifically thinking for Bale.

This is a total and opposite reality from the Chris Nolan movies. It’s another universe, so we couldn’t hire Christian Bale if we wanted to, because he doesn’t exist in our world. Maybe we could hire him to play another part. We did talk about that briefly. I just wanted to hire Christian to play another part to make that obvious. Christian could play, like, Alfred with age makeup. No! Of course not. But you know what I mean. Even people at the studio would say, ‘Who are you getting from the other movies?’ And I was like, ‘Hey, come on guys, let’s all understand, it’s a different world.’ In the Batman universe that Chris Nolan created, Superman would have a hard time existing. That that’s why we did a reboot on the universe, so we could allow these characters to exist together. We needed to do that to have Batman exist in this world.

Bale finished out his stint as Batman in The Dark Knight Rises, and the actor recently remarked that he “didn’t quite manage” what he hoped he would in the trilogy. Though, he also told Empire magazine that he did not have a positive reaction to hearing that someone would take up the role after him.

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, also starring Henry Cavill and Jesse Eisenberg, will hit theaters on March 25.