Tales From Development Hell (35 page)

In Burbank, Warner Bros was simultaneously pursuing an equally radical approach to its biggest franchise, as Aronofsky reveals. “They had a vision of a
Matrix
version that could have been really cool, but it just wasn’t something I was really interested in doing.” Aronofsky may be referring to the possibility of
The Matrix
writer-directors Larry and Andy Wachowski helming a
Batman
film — which Lorenzo di Bonaventura admitted “had crossed his mind” —
perhaps even with Keanu Reeves in the role, a rumour which Reeves himself appeared to encourage when he told listings magazine
TV Times
how he would approach the role. “It’ll have to be dark, very sombre,” he said. “Something that’ll make people think twice about whether they’re actually watching a Batman film or not... I want to see more about what makes [him] tick — Bruce is far more than just your average wacko.” As for The Joker, he went on, “He’s the archetypal bad guy, the ‘Bat-nemesis’. He’s the dude with whom the Bat must battle — he’s in the film, or I’m not! And Jack Nicholson has to do it again, definitely.” Within days, Warner Bros sensibly dismissed talk of Keanu Reeves starring as Batman, causing rumour-mongers to turn their attention to an equally bogus suggestion: Ben Affleck. Speaking via his official website’s message board, the future star of
Daredevil
hastily dismissed the claim as “pure fiction. There is no Batman script, no movie being planned, [and] they have not called me or my agent.”

While the future of the live-action
Batman
remained up in the air, the Caped Crusader was flying high in a highly stylised and hugely successful TV show,
Batman: The Animated Series,
which amassed eighty-five half-hour episodes between 1992 and 1995, and spawned numerous feature-length spin-offs — beginning with the theatrically-released
Batman: Mask of the Phantasm
— and no fewer than four sister series. One of these, Paul Dini and Alan Burnett’s futuristic
Batman Beyond
(aka
Batman of the Future)
— in which an ageing Bruce Wayne hands over the Batman mantle to teenage protégé Terry McGinnis — caught the eye of the studio, which was soon considering the possibility of a live-action version. “I know that it’s one of the possible options that they have discussed on the lot,” Dini told
Cinescape
in November 1999, adding that no script had been written. “I don’t know what their plans are for it beyond just investigating several alternative ways to keep Batman going, as opposed to the way they’ve been doing the last two or three movies,” he added. “It’s a real idea that they’re considering, but no one has asked us to be involved with it.” Warner Bros registered several domain names related to
Batman Beyond: The Movie,
which were unconnected to the direct-to-video animated feature
Batman Beyond: Return of The Joker,
and in August 2000
Variety
named Boaz Yakin, who had written a script for Marvel Comics’
The Punisher
and directed the surprise hit
Remember the Titans,
as director of the live-action
Batman Beyond.
As co-creator Paul Dini told website Comics Continuum, “Boaz is co-writing the script with Alan Burnett and myself, as well as directing.” Although such a script was almost certainly completed, soon after Dini’s announcement the studio let it be known that it was no
longer pursuing the
Batman Beyond
approach.

In the meantime, several former Batman interpreters threw their hats into the Bat-ring, with Val Kilmer expressing interest in returning to the role, while even George Clooney offering his own take on the next film: “You do the movie cheap, in a
film noir
style,” he told the Internet Movie Database. “Make Batman the Dark Knight, something Tim Burton didn’t even do. You start at Alfred’s burial, with a Sam Spade
film noir
narrator, talking to this Death figure standing there that only he sees. Go into the first big action set [piece] with Robin and he gets killed.” Clooney’s continuing contractual connection to the franchise did nothing to quell various rumours linking Brad Pitt, Nicolas Cage, Aaron Eckhart
(Erin Brockovich),
Brendan Fehr (TV’s
Roswell)
and Christian Bale
(American Psycho)
to the role, despite the fact that neither Boaz Yakin nor Darren Aronofsky had ever discussed the potential casting of their stillborn projects.

With
Year One
and
Batman Beyond
both on the shelf, a more likely prospect seemed to be the big-screen team-up of DC Comics’ two biggest heroes, a cinematic equivalent of the popular
World’s Finest
title and the animated Batman/Superman adventures. The idea was first mooted in October 1998, when Jon Peters told
Cinescape
’s Beth Laski that a fifth Batman film was unlikely, “unless we put Batman and Superman together later.” Warner Bros evidently saw a team-up movie as more than just a tantalising possibility, but a viable way of bringing the Superman and Batman franchises out of the development mire. It was soon confirmed that the studio was excited about a script entitled
Batman vs Superman,
written by
Se7en
and
Sleepy Hollow
scribe Andrew Kevin Walker and subsequently ‘polished’ by Akiva Goldsman
(Batman Forever, Batman & Robin, A Beautiful Mind),
in which the characters would begin as allies, albeit with radically different worldviews, before facing off in a showdown brought about by Bruce Wayne’s familiar desire to avenge the violent killing of a loved one.

The story begins five years into Bruce Wayne’s life post-Batman, having put his costume back into the closet following the death of Robin. He has settled down, married a woman named Elizabeth, and is happier than ever. Over in Metropolis, however, Superman has not been so lucky in love, having been dumped by Lois Lane due to the myriad difficulties of being Clark Kent’s girlfriend. When The Joker, previously thought dead, kills Elizabeth with a poison dart, Bruce takes it hard. First, he blames Superman, because the Man of Steel saved The Joker from a fatal beating just before the murder; second, he resumes the mantle of Batman — not, this time, under any pretence of
metering out justice, but for the sheer cathartic pleasure of beating up bad guys. Superman, who has been busy wooing his first love, Lana Lang, in Smallville, tries to talk Bruce out of his vengeful ways, an act which ultimately pits the two heroes against each other. Eventually, it transpires that Superman’s nemesis Lex Luthor was behind The Joker’s return, hoping that Batman and Superman would kill each other. Instead, the two heroes unite to defeat first The Joker, and finally Luthor, the man fundamentally behind Elizabeth’s death.

Opinions from Internet script reviewers were divided, either over the details of the Walker and Goldsman drafts, or the very idea of having Batman and Superman go
mano a mano.
Responding to an unfavourable review of Goldsman’s rewrite by Coming Attractions’ Darwin Mayflower, Batman on Film reporter ‘Jett’ said that, while he had not read the Goldsman draft, “I very much liked Walker’s original... I thought it was a very dark and powerful script and had a very clever way of pitting Batman against Superman. Mayflower flatly does not like the squaring off of Bats and Supes... [whereas] I found it quite exciting — plus you know that they are going to end up as allies in the end. Mayflower also has a problem with Goldsman’s (who many credit for the killing of the Bat-franchise with his p.o.s.
Batman & Robin
script) rewrites,” Jett added. “The only reason I can come up with why WB let Goldsman do rewrites was to lighten the script up a bit. Walker’s original — in my opinion — was dark. Perhaps WB thought too much so.”

Nevertheless, the studio was sufficiently excited about the script to postpone its plan for a new stand-alone Superman film
and
a fifth Batman in order to fast-track
Batman vs Superman
for a 2004 release, with Wolfgang Petersen
(Das Boot, The Perfect Storm)
at the helm. “It is the clash of the titans,” the German-born director told
Variety
in July 2002. “They play off of each other so perfectly. [Superman] is clear, bright, all that is noble and good, and Batman represents the dark, obsessive and vengeful side. They are two sides of the same coin and that is material for great drama.” Petersen subsequently spoke to
MTV.com
about his love for the
Batman
and
Superman
films, “especially in both cases the first two. I saw them over and over again.”
Batman vs Superman,
he added, would be part of the lore of the films and the comics, “but it’s also different. First of all, the dynamics are different because if they are in one movie together it changes a lot of things and it gives you a new perspective on superheroes... You also have the look and feel of Metropolis, the bright golden city, and the feel of Gotham, which is a shadowy, sinister city, in the same movie. This is Superman/Batman of the time after September 11th, also. It takes place in today or tomorrow’s world.”

Unsurprisingly, the announcement of a fast-tracked
Batman vs Superman
movie led to a surge of speculation as to which actors might don the respective capes. “We have a script that really very, very much concentrates on the characters,” Petersen told
MTV.com
. “It’s really material for two great actors.” Although he had previously cited Matt Damon as a possible star, Petersen later clarified that he was merely an example of the kind of actor he was looking for. “Someone who we so far did not really think of as a big action hero, who turned out to be a great actor who can also do great action... He’s one of these guys, but there’s a lot of these guys out there.” As far as the rumour-mills were concerned, Jude Law and Josh Hartnett were apparently front-runners to play Superman/Clark Kent, while Colin Farrell and Christian Bale — the latter previously connected with the
Year One
role — were widely mentioned for dual duties as Bruce Wayne and Batman. (“No, that’s
Bateman,
not Batman,” quipped Bale, referring to Patrick Bateman, his character in
American Psycho.)
Barely a month after the
Variety
announcement, however,
Batman vs Superman
seemed suddenly to have fallen out of favour with the studio, leading director Wolfgang Petersen to quit the project in favour of
Troy,
an epic retelling of Homer’s
The Iliad
starring Brad Pitt.

The studio’s swift about-face was based on a number of factors. Firstly, on 5 July,
Alias
creator J. J. Abrams had turned in the first eighty-eight pages of a new stand-alone Superman script, designed to be the first of a trilogy. Bob Brassel, a senior vice president for production at the studio, called producer Jon Peters, urging him to read the work-in-progress. “I did,” Peters told
The New York Times,
“and it was amazing. In a world of chaos, it’s about hope and light.” Abrams delivered the remaining fifty pages of the script in mid-July, just as
Spider-Man
began its amazing assault on box office records, suggesting that light and airy, not dark and powerful, was the way to go with superhero flicks. At that point, Peters, Abrams and Brassel met in the offices of executive vice president for worldwide motion pictures Lorenzo di Bonaventura — the man behind the
Harry Potter
and
Matrix
movies, and a long time champion of
Batman vs Superman
— who said that he liked the script (“It had more epic ambition than earlier
Superman
scripts,” he said later), but that he planned to release
Batman vs Superman
first. According to Peters, Abrams said, “You can’t do that,” suggesting that it was akin to releasing
When Harry Divorced Sally
before
When Harry Met Sally.

Both sides had their points: with two iconic heroes for the price of one,
Batman vs Superman
arguably stood the better chance in a marketplace soon to be crowded with superhero films, ranging from
Hulk
to
Daredevil,
and
more sequels featuring Spider-Man and The X-Men; however, if the darker sensibility of
Batman vs Superman
did not connect with audiences, it could effectively kill both franchises before they had had a chance to be revived. Besides, if either
Batman
or
Superman
failed, the studio would still have the team-up movie to fall back on. As studio president Alan Horn told
The New York Times,
“In reintroducing these characters we wanted to do what was in the best interest of the company.” Thus, in early August, Horn asked ten senior studio executives — representing international and domestic theatrical marketing, consumer products and home video — to read both scripts, and decide which of them stood the better chance in the post
-Spider-Man
marketplace. “I wanted some objectivity,” Horn explained. “Why not get an opinion or two?” At the meeting, di Bonaventura argued in favour of
Batman vs Superman;
others, however, felt that Abrams’ three-part Superman story had better long-term prospects for toy, DVD and ancilliary sales. Besides, even if the majority had not favoured the
Superman
script, Horn had the casting vote. “I said I wanted to do
Superman,”
he told
The New York Times.
“At the end of the day it’s my job to decide what movies we make.”

The plan, Horn later told
The Hollywood Reporter,
was that
Superman,
the long-mooted
Catwoman
spin-off, and “a Batman origins movie” (presumably
Year One)
would revive both franchises, paving the way for a team-up movie. “I’d like to think that each character will evolve so that when we have
Batman vs Superman,
the meeting of the two will feel more organic,” he said. Peters, the former hairdresser and
Batman
producer who had toiled through the development of a Superman film for eight years, was moved to tears when Alan Horn phoned to tell him the news. “I swear I heard the flapping of angel wings when Alan was talking,” he said. Peters, in turn, called Christopher Reeve, who had played Superman in four films between 1978 and 1987, and had recently guest-starred on the small-screen Superman show
Smallville,
despite a crippling spinal injury he suffered in a fall from a horse. “He told me that his original idea was to do a film of
Superman vs Batman,”
Reeve later recalled. “They were pretty far into it, and then Jon saw that documentary that my son made about me and how five years after the injury I started to move.” According to Reeve, Peters began to rethink the idea: “‘Why should [they] have two superheroes fighting?’
¹
The movie that Warner Bros is making now will be a much more uplifting and spiritual story.” In August, Warner
Bros officially switched off
Batman vs Superman
’s green light. Days later, on 4 September, its greatest champion, Lorenzo di Bonaventura, quit after twelve years at the studio, giving credence to the widespread speculation that Horn vs di Bonaventura — an epic battle of wills between two of the studios biggest guns over two of its biggest assets — had contributed to his departure.