Darren Aronofsky Says The Joker Origin Film in Development Sounds a Lot Like His Early BATMAN Film Pitch
As you know, Warner Bros. is currently developing a Joker origin film outside of the DCEU with Martin Scorsese, Todd Philips, and hopefully Leonardo DiCaprio. Before this whole DCEU thing took off, Darren Aronofsky pitched a Batman movie to the studio and it was rejected because executives felt that it was too dark.
Well, as you know, the darkness doesn't seem to be an issue for the studio these days. And, as it turns out, it sounds like Aronofsky's pitch may have influenced the upcoming Joker origin film. During a recent interview with Firstshowing, the director was asked about his Batman pitch and he said that the new Joker film was exactly his pitch to the studio.
"You know what, I think it's finally... I think we were basically, whatever it is, fifteen years too early. Because I hear the way they’re talking about the Joker movie and that's exactly – that was my pitch."
"I was like: we're going to shoot in East Detroit and East New York. We're not building Gotham. The Batmobile – I wanted to be a Lincoln Continental with two bus engines in it... With two bus engines, all duct taped together. It was the duct tape MacGyver Batman."
Well, that sounds interesting! A duct tape style MacGyver Batman. That would have certainly been very very different than any Batman we've seen before. He goes on to say that he believes other elements from his film pitch have already made it into films like Batman v Superman. He explains:
"Some of my ideas got out there through other films. Like the ring with "BW", Bruce Wayne's ring making the scar was our idea and I think that was in Zack [Snyder's] or something. Which is fine, you write these ideas and they get out. "
"We were all about reinventing it and trying to make it more Taxi Driver visceral. That was the whole pitch. But the toy people were like, 'Oh it can't be a Lincoln Continental, you have to make a Batmobile.'"
I would have actually loved to see Aronofsky's version of Batman. It sounds like it would have been both absolutely crazy and awesome. I know we'll never see this exact vision of the Dark Knight get made, but it sounds like we'll be seeing elements from it in this upcoming Joker film.
I'm actually becoming more excited about this Joker movie than I am for the other films in the DCEU. There's just so much great talent involved that's it's hard not to be excited!
The concept art you see above was done for Aronofsky's Batman film.