In between Joel Schumacher’s infamously disastrous Batman & Robin and Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins, countless attempts were made to try and bring the Dark Knight back from the brink of cinematic irrelevancy. Without a doubt, one of the most famous was Darren Aronofsky’s adaptation of seminal storyline Batman: Year One.
Hot off the success of Requiem for a Dream, which had marked him out as having the potential to be a generational filmmaking talent, the writer and director was hired by Warner Bros. to tackle the Caped Crusader, with many sweeping changes being made to the source material in the process.
An early draft of the script leaking online was torn to shreds by hardcore fans, and Year One eventually vanished into the ether of development hell, never to be seen or heard from again. However, Aronofsky claimed in an interview with Variety that his pitch would stand a much better chance of being made today, and he might have even been way too early to the party.
“It was after Batman & Robin, the Joel Schumacher one. That had been a big hiccup back then at Warner Bros., so I pitched them a rated-R, boiled-down origin story of Batman. A rated-R superhero movie was probably 10 to 15 years out of whack with the reality of the business then. It had promise, but it was just a first draft. The studio weren’t really interested. It was a very different take. I was always saying, ‘why can’t there be several different types of comic book movies out there.’ Now there are. It’s just our timing was off.”
He’s got a point when movies like Deadpool, Logan, and Joker have been racking up huge box office totals and even some awards season recognition, so there’s definitely a gap in the market for an R-rated Batman story. That being said, it’s not as if anyone’s going to begrudge the existence of Nolan’s trilogy or Matt Reeves recent reinvention of the Gotham City mythos, leaving Year One as one of the most famous superhero blockbusters that never was.
Published: Oct 12, 2022 12:03 pm