This year's big superhero face-off will be the first live-action Batman film helmed by someone other than Christopher Nolan for nearly two decades – and new director Zack Synder has revealed that the director found it difficult to hand over the Wayne reins.

Speaking to Empire magazine, Snyder recalled a conversation between the movie-making pair, in which he first raised the idea of the DC Comics favourites going cape-to-cape. “You tell me if you don't want me to do it,” Snyder said to Nolan. “Well, we don't own these characters. When you're done making Batman movies, someone else will,” the Inception chief replied.

“I think he found it a little bit hard,” says Snider. “I would feel the same way.” Nolan has experience with both characters, having directed The Dark Knight Trilogy and served as executive producer on Snider's Man of Steel, so it's no wonder he eventually gave his blessing for Batman v Superman to go ahead.

Snider added that a critical point of focus for him is the intimacy between the pair. “In a lot of ways Batman v Superman is a very personal concept,” he explains. “It is just two people trying to understand each other's point of view.”

Starring Ben Affleck, Harry Cavill, Amy Adams, Gal Gadot, and Jesse Eisenberg, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice arrives in cinemas in the UK and the US on 25 March, 2016.

Images: Warner Bros