Yahoo News 10 planned Batman movies we'll never get to see
As Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight turns 10, it's time to look back on the history of "what ifs" and "maybes" for the Caped Crusader. While there were once rumours of Heath Ledger returning for a third movie, Philip Seymour Hoffman waddling in as Penguin and the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio or David Hyde Pierce putting a question mark over The Riddler, Nolan's plans eventually evolved into The Dark Knight Rises.
As Batman now finds himself in a state of confusion while Matt Reeves moves ahead with The Batman and audiences will never get to see Ben Affleck's version of that movie, here are 10 cancelled Batman movies that never saw the light of day.
1. Tim Burton's Batman Forever
After the lofty heights of Batman Returns, Tim Burton's dark take on the Dark Knight was due for a third movie. The Riddler was always on the cards and the late Robin Williams was poised to play the puzzling psychopath. Elsewhere, Burton was expected to introduce Marlon Wayans as Robin.
Sadly, Warner Bros. decided it wanted a family-friendly approach to bring the Dynamic Duo to the screen and Burton soon parted ways with the studio. Speaking in the 2005 documentary Shadows of the Bat, Burton recalled his spectacular exit from the series:
"I remember toying with the idea of doing another one. And I remember going into Warner Bros and having a meeting. And I'm going, 'I could do this or we could do that.' And they go like, 'Tim, don't you want to do a smaller movie now? Just something that's more [you]?' About half an hour into the meeting, I go, 'You don't want me to make another one, do you?' And they go, 'Oh, no, no, no, no, no!' And I just said, 'No, I know you!' So, we just stopped it right there".
With Burton gone, Joel Schumacher joined the project and Michael Keaton swiftly departed as well. Although the movie went through many drafts and villain combos, Val Kilmer eventually took over as Bruce Wayne for the neon headache that was Batman Forever.
2. Batman Unchained
If fans thought Batman Forever flew away from what Burton has established, this was nothing compared to the rubber nipples and ice puns of 1997's Batman & Robin. Despite Batman & Robin frequently joining lists of "Worst Superhero Movies Ever", Joel Schumacher was still supposed to get behind the wheel of the Batmobile once more.
Mark Protosevich replaced Akiva Goldsman as the movie's writer, George Clooney was set to return in his codpiece, and Batman Unchained (sometimes called Triumphant) was tipped for a mid-1999 release. Nicolas Cage was circling the role of Scarecrow and either Madonna or Courtney Love could have played Harley Quinn.
Promised to be darker than Schumacher's first two movies, Batman Unchained locked Batman in Arkham Asylum alongside Scarecrow's fear gas and brought back the likes of Jack Nicholson, Danny DeVito, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Jim Carrey in their various villain roles for "the most expensive movie ever made". But what happened?
Protosevich told The Hollywood Reporter that after he'd submitted a script to the execs, he remembers the exact moment he knew Unchained was "unchained" from Warner Bros' slate:
"This got into a period of weeks and then a month, and my agent pestering Warners. And the next thing I knew, they were pulling the plug on the whole project. They were going to wait and see what they were going to do with Batman. The Joel Schumacher-driven Batman train was taken off the rails".
While Unchained slipped into the lost pages of Batman lore, several aspects of the script did make their way into Christopher Nolan's critically-acclaimed Batman Begins.
3. Catwoman spin-off
With its glorious ensemble cast of Keaton, DeVito, Christopher Walken and Michelle Pfeiffer, many Batman movie fans have a soft spot for Batman Returns. In the male-dominated movie, Pfeiffer's portrayal of Catwoman was something for the ages.
Burton's climax teased that Selina Kyle could return one day as the cat with nine lives slunk across the Gotham skyline. Much more than just returning for a third Burton caper, the fan-reaction to Catwoman meant Warner Bros toyed with a Pfeiffer-centric spin-off.
Speaking to The New York Times, Pfeiffer said she loved the idea of squeezing into that PVC suit and clawing her way to the top of the box office:
"I loved that part. I felt like I was just getting comfortable and getting used to the claws and the mask, just figuring out how to move in all of that," she said. "There was a little bit of talk about that, then that kind of faded away".
There are no other details on what Burton has planned for this 'purrfect' idea, but in a cruel twist of fate, fans would eventually get the dubious honour of Halle Berry taking over the role for Catwoman – and you thought Batman & Robin was bad…
4. Batman Beyond
Batman is currently known for the grizzled Batfleck era, but there was once a plan to focus on an even older Bruce Wayne in a live-action adaptation of Batman Beyond. The dystopian cartoon of the same name is set in a cyberpunk Gotham and follows an aged Bruce passing over the Batman mantle to a young man called Terry McGinnis.
While Batman Beyond seems primed for a movie outing (one day), Remember the Titans director Boaz Yakin explained to IGN how his agent threw him a bat-shaped lifeline during the franchise's in-between years:
"He came back to me and said, 'I have a meeting set up for you at Warner Bros about Batman'. I was like, 'What!? Okay.'..."So I said, 'Okay, let me see what I can do,' and I came up with this pitch on Batman Beyond".
Although Yakin was briefly attached to Batman Beyond, the futuristic foray was pushed aside to make room for Batman Begins. Writing a script with Batman Beyond creators Paul Dini and Alan Burnett, Yakin said it was the "the best script I ever wrote that never got made".
5. Justice League: Mortal
Twitter Exclusive | #Batman and #Superman concept art from #JusticeLeagueMortal pic.twitter.com/sA3a77js2f
- DC Films Hub (@DCFilmsHub) March 21, 2018
[via dcfilmshub.com]
Forget Zack Snyder, the Justice League was actually meant to hit screens long before the DCEU's maligned outing. Something of a legend in DC circles was George Miller's Justice League: Mortal. The Mad Max director had grand plans to "Unite the Seven" with an all-star cast that included Megan Gale, Adam Brody, Anton Yelchin, and a pre-Call Me by Your Name Armie Hammer suiting up as the Caped Crusader.
Justice League: Mortal was just days away from shooting in Australia before the writers' strike and some Australian politics meant Miller had to pull the plug on the $250 million project. Hammer may be glad that Justice League Mortal never happened, but he might be the only one.
6. Ivan Reitman's The Batman
Off the back of the campy Adam West TV series, no one knew what to do with Bruce Wayne's alter ego until Batman '89. Somewhere between Burton's legacy and Adam West's dancing was the strange idea to cast Bill Murray as Batman, as Ghostbusters director Ivan Reitman wanted to swap Ecto-1 for the Batmobile.
The script was handled by Tom Mankiewicz and included a storyline where Murray's billionaire playboy would star alongside Eddie Murphy as the Boy Wonder and go up against a terrifying David Bowie Joker.
Potential cast members like David Niven and William Holden died while the Mankiewicz script went through nine rewrites before fading into obscurity. Burton was hired after the success of Pee-wee's Big Adventure and wheels were finally in motion towards Batman '89.
7. Joe Dante's The Batman
Sticking with the pre-Burton days, Reitman's departure left a gap for someone else to take on the challenge of bringing light to the Dark Knight. Also tipped to sit in the director's chair was Gremlins director Joe Dante, in a twisted tale that would have John Lithgow as The Joker.
Just as Ledger would later become obsessed with playing The Joker, something about the Clown Prince of Crime deeply disturbed Dante. Speaking to Psychotronic Cinema, he admitted that The Joker ended up overtaking his vision for Batman:
"And for whatever reason, I started to gravitate more towards The Joker than towards Batman. And I actually woke up one night and I said to myself, 'I can't do this movie – I'm more interested in The Joker than I am in Batman, and that's not the way it should be'," he explained. "I think I was not the right guy to do the movie".
So, Dante basically wanted to make Todd Phillips' Joker 30 years before anyone else did!
8. Batman: DarKnight
More than just a clever bit of wordplay for a title, Batman: DarKnight was a project that hoped to cash in on Batman's macabre moments. Writers Lee Shapiro and Stephen Wise wanted a full reboot after Batman & Robin with a script (very) loosely based on Frank Miller's beloved The Dark Knight Returns.
DarKnight would have brought an older Batman out of retirement to take on Scarecrow and Dr Kirk Langstrom, aka Man-Bat, while Dick Grayson attended university. The script sounded like a solid return to Batman's Burton-esque roots, but Shapiro revealed to Batman on Film that DarKnight was passed around to literally everyone before Warner Bros passed on the project for good.
For anyone who has played Rocksteady's Arkham games, they'll know just how terrifying the criminally underused Man-Bat is as a villain. Sadly, DarKnight was shelved in favour of potential Year One and Batman Beyond movies – both of which also never made past planning stages.
9. Batman: Year One
One of the most famous Batman movies that never got to unfurl its wings properly was Darren Aronofsky's Batman: Year One. Again, adapting directly from the comics, the mother! director wanted Joaquín Phoenix to suit up as the stoic superhero.
Aronofsky told IGN that he expected fans to "toss out everything you can imagine about Batman! Everything! We're starting completely anew."
Year One even managed to snare Frank Miller to work on the script, but Aronofsky revealed that the team simply ran out of time. Year One bit the dust back in 2002 and Warner Bros. began to work towards Batman Begins.
While Aronofsky's vision may have been confined to the Batcave, Phillips and Martin Scorsese's gritty gangster-inspired Joker sounds like it will be heading down a similar path.
10. Batman vs Superman
But wait, we've already got Batman v Superman... For anyone hoping for something a little more fun than Zack Snyder's notoriously glum Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, the idea of Gotham's saviour going up against the Metropolis Marvel is nothing new.
In 2001, sci-fi staple JJ Abrams wrote a script for Superman: Flyby, with McG attached to direct. Warner Bros soon shelved Flyby – and the chance for Robert Downey Jr to play Lex Luthor – to look at other options.
Still keen to work on some sort of Superman story, Air Force One's Wolfgang Petersen took on a script for Batman vs Superman. He later told MTV how Warner Bros. found itself between a rock and a hard place:
"It's such a fascinating concept to do a Batman vs Superman film," he said. "And I still think it would be to do that. But the studio decided to try separate versions of Superman and Batman."
Fate intervened and the two characters went their separate ways for Superman Returns and Batman Begins. Who knows if the noughties Batman v Superman would have fared any better than their DCEU brawl?
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