Joaquin Phoenix Would Have Starred in Darren Aronofsky’s Batman: Year One

There’ve been many scrapped Batman movies over the years, but one of the most fascinating is Darren Aronofsky’s Batman: Year One. 

Loosely based on Frank Miller’s seminal comic book, the film would have told a radically different origin story for the Dark Knight than what we’re used to. Notable elements include depicting Bruce Wayne as a street punk with hockey pads and a baton and Alfred the butler being recast as a young African-American car mechanic.

While promoting his latest effort, Jennifer Lawrence vehicle mother!, Aronofsky revealed some new interesting details on what he would have done with the Caped Crusader. It turns out he even had a specific actor in mind to play the part.

“I always wanted Joaquin Phoenix for Batman,” said the director.

Of course, this isn’t the first time Phoenix has been linked with a superhero role. We’ve previously seen him be considered to play Bruce Banner AKA Hulk in The Avengers and later the title role in Marvel’s Doctor Strange. He was also in with a shot of portraying Lex Luthor in Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice. 

Aronofsky then went on to explain that he thinks his vision for the character was “out of time,” as more radical takes on the superhero genre are a lot more common now than they were last decade.

“It’s funny, I think we were just sort of out of time with our idea. I understood that [with] comics, there’s room for all different types of titles, but I think Hollywood at that time was still in the Golden Age of comics, and they were still just doing the classic titles in classic ways.”

Batman: Year One was not to be, however. Warner Bros. ultimately balked at the idea of an R-rated superhero movie – how times have changed! – and went with Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy instead. It’s fair to say things worked out for the best, then, but we’re still kind of jealous of the parallel world out there where Joaquin Phoenix is Batman.