All 9 Canceled Batman Movies (& Why They Didn’t Happen)

From Darren Aronofsky’s Batman: Year One to Batman vs. Superman starring Colin Farrell, here’s every unmade Batman movie (and why they were canceled).

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Here’s every unmade Batman film, and why they were canceled. The Caped Crusader has a long and varied history on the big screen, going from the camptastic heights of Adam West’s run in the 1960s to Christian Bale’s comparatively realistic, post-9/11 re-interpretation of the character in the ’00s. No two cinematic versions of the character are the same either, whether they’re live-action or animated (case in point: Batman: Mask of the Phantasm vs. The LEGO Batman Movie). It’s a benefit to being a Batman fan: if you don’t like one particular iteration, you generally don’t have to wait long for another to pop up.

For as many Batman movies that’ve been made over the years, there are a whole lot that never made it past pre-production – and the ones that did went through so many changes the final version barely resembled the original pitch. For example, around the time Warner Bros. was moving forward with Batman Forever in the mid-1990s, they were also developing a Batman Returns spinoff featuring Catwoman, with Michelle Pfeiffer returning as Selina Kyle and Tim Burton potentially directing. After that, it lingered in development limbo for nearly a decade before the studio revived it as the infamously-derided Catwoman movie starring Halle Berry in 2004.

For better or worse, most of the other Batman movies that’ve gotten stuck in development over the years have since been canceled rather than re-purposed. Here’s a rundown of every unmade reboot, sequel, spinoff, or crossover featuring the Caped Crusader so far.

Batman vs. Godzilla

A year before the Caped Crusader got his first full-length theatrical film (1966’s Batman: The Movie starring West), longtime Godzilla movie writer Shinichi Sekizawa proposed the idea of Batman vs. Godzilla, a film that would’ve pitted Batman and Robin in a battle against the King of the Monsters (with a little help from their Bat-technology and Bat-vehicles, naturally). To this day, there’s still a lot that’s unknown about the project, including whether Sekizawa ever pitched his concept to DC and whether it was abandoned because of the Batman TV show and movie starring West. Interestingly, both the Batman and American Godzilla franchise (e.g. the MonsterVerse) are now based at Warner Bros., so technically this crossover could still happen. (It almost definitely won’t, but no harm in dreaming…)

Tim Burton’s Batman 3

After helming 1989’s Batman and its sequel, Batman Returns, Tim Burton had initially planned on directing a third film starring Michael Keaton as the Caped Crusader. The movie would’ve not only brought back Pfeiffer’s Catwoman from Batman Returns, but also had Billy Dee Williams’ Harvey Dent (following his appearance in the ’89 Batman) transform into Two-Face and join forces with Mickey Dolenz (aka. the drummer for The Monkees) as The Riddler. In addition, Rene Russo was set to play Dr. Chase Meridian and Marlon Wayans was attached to portray Robin after he’d been cast then cut from Batman Returns. However, when Batman Returns saw a significant drop-off at the box office from its predecessor and was criticized for its macabre tone and more grotesque elements, WB abandoned Burton’s vision in favor of the more family-friendly Batman Forever.

Joel Schumacher’s Batman 5

Following his success with Batman Forever (which outgrossed Batman Returns), Joel Schumacher was re-hired to direct its sequel, Batman & Robin. Pleased with the way the latter was shaping up, WB actually approached Schumacher about making another Batman movie in 1996, and hired Mark Protosevich to write the script. Unlike his first two outings with the Caped Crusader, Schumacher wanted his Batman 5 (aka. Batman Unchained) to hew closer to the darker tone of Burton’s films. Its story was equally psychological and saw the Scarecrow (a role Schumacher courted both Nicolas Cage and Coolio to play) team up with Harley Quinn in an attempt to psychologically torture Batman, with Harley re-imagined as the Joker’s vengeful daughter. In the end, the project was canceled after Batman & Robin bombed (both critically and commercially) in 1997.

Batman & Robin Spinoff

Back in the ’90s, WB was hot on the Batman movies, and had plans to expand them with multiple spinoffs, including films about Pfeiffer’s Catwoman from Batman Returns and Chris O’Donnell’s Robin from Batman Forever and Batman & Robin. The former, as mentioned earlier, eventually became 2004’s Catwoman, but the latter never saw the light of day in any form. As O’Donnell explained in an interview with Access Hollywood in 2012, “They were going to do [a Robin spinoff] back in the day. And then [‘Batman & Robin’] was such a bomb, they were like, ‘Scrap that!'”. The Dick Grayson version of Robin hasn’t been depicted in a live-action movie since then, though he did receive a shout-out during 2012’s The Dark Knight Rises when it’s revealed the character John Blake (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is legally named Robin Blake. 2016’s Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice also nodded to the death of Robin in the DCEU, prior to the film’s events.

Batman: DarKnight

Not long before they decided to reboot the Batman franchise in the 2000s, WB was approached about making a film titled Batman: DarKnight, based on a script by Lee Shapiro and Stephen Wise. Based in part on Frank Miller’s classic comic book story The Dark Knight Returns, DarKnight (like Batman Unchained) featured Jonathan Crane aka. Scarecrow as a villain, and saw Dr. Kirk Langstrom transform into his infamous alter ego Man-Bat. As with Schumacher’s proposed Batman 5, Shapiro and Wise’s plan was to take the Caped Crusader back to his darker roots and away from the campier inclinations of the prior two installments. In the end, Warner Bros. passed on the project and turned its attention to making a film about a younger Bruce Wayne, instead.

Batman: Year One/Batman Beyond

At one point, WB had both a live-action adaptation of the Batman Beyond animated series and a movie based on Miller’s comic book Batman: Year One in the works, but it was the latter that really gained traction in the early ’00s. The studio hired Darren Aronofsky to helm the film, which would’ve dramatically altered Batman’s classic origin story by having Bruce Wayne lose his fortune after his parents are killed and become a proper street-level vigilante. Aronofsky has compared his vision of the Caped Crusader to Taxi Driver’s Travis Bickle and claimed the movie at large would’ve resembled ’70s thrillers like Death Wish, in terms of its grim tone and violence. WB, as you’d imagine, was always wary of the project, but it may’ve been Aronofsky’s push to cast Joaquin Phoenix as Bruce Wayne (when the studio had its eye on Freddie Prinze Jr.) that acted as the final nail in the coffin.

Batman vs. Superman

Some 14-15 years before Batman V Superman hit theaters, there was a similar crossover titled Batman vs. Superman in the works, as part of then-WB head Alan Horn’s efforts to revive the Batman and Superman movies at the same time. The project started with a pitch from writer Andrew Kevin Walker, but was later revised by Batman Forever and Batman & Robin writer Akira Goldsman. In an interview in May 2020, Goldsman revealed the film had Colin Farrell and Jude Law lined up to play Batman and Superman (with Wolfgang Petersen directing), and described it as “the darkest thing you’ve ever seen,” complete with Alfred’s death and Joker devising a cruel scheme to “break” Batman emotionally. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Batman vs. Superman was later abandoned so WB could keep the two superhero franchises separate and focus on making, respectively, a darker Batman reboot and lighter Superman movie (which would become Batman Begins and Superman Returns, respectively).

Justice League: Mortal

A Batman and Superman crossover wasn’t the only thing WB considered then abandoned in the ’00s before revisiting the concept in the DCEU. Mad Max director George Miller was on the cusp of beginning production on his Justice League movie, titled Justice League: Mortal, in the summer of 2008 when the studio pulled the plug on the whole thing on the heels of The Dark Knight’s massive critical and commercial success. Armie Hammer was attached to play Batman in the film and later described his version of the character as being “severely, psychologically, almost deranged” and closer to Bale’s iteration of Bruce Wayne than anyone else’s. The actor has also said he’s actually happy Justice League: Mortal didn’t happen, as he feels “I wouldn’t have turned in a great performance, or even a good performance – it would have just been whatever”, coming at such an early point in his acting career.

Ben Affleck’s The Batman

Initially, WB planned to follow Batman V Superman and Justice League with a solo DCEU vehicle for Ben Affleck’s iteration of the Caped Crusader. Simply titled The Batman, the film reportedly would’ve been a mystery and psychological thriller in the vein of David Fincher’s The Game, with Affleck reprising his role as Bruce Wayne in addition to co-writing the script and directing. In an interview to promote The Way Back in February 2020, Affleck explained his eventual decision to step away from The Batman (and the DCEU) in early 2017, saying he’d “kind of lost my passion for it” and had been dealing with a variety of both professional and personal issues at the time. The Batman has since been completely revamped and is now being written and directed by Matt Reeves, with Robert Pattinson playing a less-experienced, 30-something Batman.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/batman-movies-canceled-reasons-not-happen-explained/