Zack Snyder and Chris Terrio's vision for the DC Extended Universe was dark, but it sounds like Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice was going to be even grimmer before the writer boarded the project.
When the movie begins, we see that Ben Affleck's Caped Crusader is heading down a dark path and has begun to brand criminals. Ultimately, Superman's sacrifice sets Batman back on a more heroic path, but had Warner Bros. had their way, that character development would have been non-existent.
Vanity Fair asked Terrio whether he was blamed for the tone of Snyder's DC movies, and he explained: "The studio seemed to take this position after BvS that my writing was too dark and that this was their problem. But what they didn’t mention was that, for example, in the draft of the Batman/Superman script that W.B. had developed - [which was] the draft I was handed when I joined the project - Batman was not only branding criminals with a bat brand, he also ended the movie by branding Lex Luthor."
"That ending was a point over which I explicitly went to the mat with the studio again and again," the writer revealed. "I argued that Batman cannot end the movie continuing this behavior, which amounted to torture, because then the movie was endorsing what he did."
Asked to elaborate on what his argument was, Terrio explained his thinking behind Batman's story arc.
"It’s one thing if Batman begins the movie as a dark version of himself whom we don’t recognize, but he has to see the error of his ways and remember his better self in the course of the movie. By the end of the movie, he needs to be the Batman we know, and he has to be ready to go and create the Justice League. Otherwise, I said, what was the point?"
You can't argue with that, and it seems clear that Warner Bros. never really had a plan or much of an idea about where to take these DC Comics adaptations. Terrio would still return to pen the screenplay for Justice League, but as he's explained, that wasn't a particularly easy experience for him, either.
Would you have liked to see this much darker ending for Batman v Superman in 2016?