Before Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice was even a glint in Zack Snyder’s eye, Darren Aronofsky was plotting to make a big screen version of Frank Miller’s Batman: Year One. Over the years we’ve seen many proposed superhero movies fail to make it past the development stages, and sadly, this is one of those. In a new interview with THR, Miller himself drops tons of details on why this project burned out.
According to Miller, the main problem between the pair was in how they viewed Batman. Most folks would agree that he’s a troubled, unorthodox, crime fighter, but for Miller, Aronofsky took that too far:
“It was the first time I worked on a Batman project with somebody whose vision of Batman was darker than mine. My Batman was too nice for him. We would argue about it, and I’d say, “Batman wouldn’t do that, he wouldn’t torture anybody,” and so on.”
Holy smokes, that’s an interesting thought – especially bearing in mind that Miller is largely credited with birthing new, gritty era of modern superhero in The Dark Knight Returns and Year One. They still managed to make put aside their differences though:
“We hashed out a screenplay, and we were wonderfully compensated, but then Warner Bros. read it and said, “We don’t want to make this movie.” The executive wanted to do a Batman he could take his kids to. And this wasn’t that. It didn’t have the toys in it.”
No Bat toys?
“The Batmobile was just a tricked-out car. And Batman turned his back on his fortune to live a street life so he could know what people were going through. He built his own Batcave in an abandoned part of the subway. And he created Batman out of whole cloth to fight crime and a corrupt police force.”
This is one hell of an interesting take on Bruce Wayne’s fight for justice. Despite the fact we’ve had Tim Burton’s first two Batmans and Christopher Nolan’s superb trilogy, who wouldn’t want to see a homeless Bruce Wayne combating crime from the streets?