It’s been about four years since Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice released. It was a dark, brooding take of a rivalry between the two titular heroes, who came to blows due to their inherent distrust for another and Lex Luthor's machinations fueling that flame. Needless to say that not everyone was on board with the dark interpretation.
Still, this vision for a dark Batman and Superman movie goes much further back to 2001. At the time, Akiva Goldsman was tasked to write a Batman Vs. Superman movie that would have starred Colin Farrell and Jude Law. Believe it or not, it sounds like it could have been darker than Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Here’s what Goldsman told Collider:
I wrote on […] this version of Batman v Superman [around 2001 or 2002]— when Colin Farrell was cast as Batman and Jude Law was cast as Superman and Wolfgang Petersen was directing —we were in prep and it was the darkest thing you’ve ever seen. It started with Alfred’s funeral and Bruce has fallen in love and renounced being Batman, the Joker kills his wife, and then you discover it was all a lie. Just that the love itself was constructed by the Joker to break [Bruce]. It was a time where you would be able to get these sort of stories together in script form but they couldn’t quite land in the world. Somehow, the expectations of the object — whether they be audience or corporate or directorial — it wasn’t landing quite in the way I think we imagined when we put them on the page.
Of course, Akiva Goldsman's dark vision for Batman's future never took off. While his vision for this Batman and Superman movie sound dark, he also was the writer of Batman & Robin, and he thought that movie was dark at one point. He has since apologized for Batman & Robin being so bad.
0 Comments