Before Christopher Nolan gave us
Batman Begins, there were many other pitches and directions for a Batman movie to go after
Batman & Robin nearly killed the Batman film franchise. One direction was obviously Nolan's
Batman Begins. Another was Darren Aronofsky's
Batman Year One in which he wrote a script with
The Dark Knight Returns writer Frank Miller. Another had Joel Schumacher returning for a film set after
Batman & Robin called Batman: Triumphant that would have had Madonna as Harley Quinn, Nicolas Cage as Scarecrow, and Jack Nicholson back as Joker. One of the pitches was
Remember The Titans's director Boaz Yakin. He pitched a Batman film based on the cartoon
Batman Beyond in which we saw an older Bruce Wayne who was retired and passed the cowl down to a teenager named Terry Mcginnis. Yakin wrote a screenplay with 2 of the series creators in Paul Dini and Alan Burnett. In promoting his upcoming film
Max, Yakin recalls his days working on
Batman Beyond.
How Yakin got the chance to pitch a Batman movie:
"I had just made Remember the Titans and my inclination is to always go off a trend: make an independent film after I make a studio film. I spoke to my agent, and he said, 'I think you need to do another studio movie before you do that.' I was just basically like, 'Well, if I'm going to do a studio movie, like, I want it to be Batman' -- which at the time I just meant, if I'm going to do a studio movie, I want it to be a big ol' thing.
He came back to me and said, 'I have a meeting set up for you at Warner Bros. about Batman.' I was like, 'What!? [Laughs] Okay.' I guess at the time I think Darren Aronofsky was developing a Batman: Year One type of thing. So I said, 'Okay, let me see what I can do,' and I came up with this pitch on Batman Beyond."
Yakin's vision for the film:
"It was almost like Sam Raimi's Spider-Man but a little bit darker -- a teenage, kind of futuristic, cyberpunk Batman thing."
Why Yakin didn't go through with Batman Beyond:
"[I] very quickly got the feeling that I would be in the zone, the madness, and I didn't really have the heart for it at the time and I basically bailed after one draft. I just went, 'I can't do this.'
It might have really hurt my career. I went off and wrote the best script I ever wrote that never got made. But it was just one of those moments in time where you think you want to do something, and then you realize you don't really want to do it, and for some reason it's on your IMDb page for the rest of your life. [Laughs]
Batman seems to be popular in any iteration. I think [Batman Beyond] is apart enough from the regular Batman that people are allowed to play in that playground, without sort of f***ing with continuity and all this stuff that people are so concerned with. It's a different look at the character."
So what are your thoughts on Yakin's pitch for
Batman Beyond? His direction seemed pretty much in line of the show since Terry really was Spider-Man in a Batman suit in terms of a high school kid, has his father die, and cracks jokes. Would you have been excited for Yakin's vision? Would you have had problems with it? Comment below, let me know. Peace and remember...