Frank Miller Says Darren Aronofsky's BATMAN Film Project Was Way Too Dark
Years ago, legendary Batman comic book writer Frank Miller teamed up with director Darren Aronofsky to make a new Batman movie for Warner Bros. They made their pitch to the studio and had a script written, but it was ultimately rejected. In an interview with THR, Miller talks about the project and reveals that it was just too damn dark:
"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. 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. 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."
I would have loved to see this vision of Batman brought to life! It's a very different take on the character than we've ever seen before. Of course, I'm not surprised that WB would pass on it. It was just too much for them to handle at the time. With Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy, Batman v Superman, and Suicide Squad, it doesn't sound like that darkness would matter now.
I think it's hilarious that Miller thought Aronofsky's take on the character was too dark, because Miller brought a darkness to Batman that we had never seen before. They've got to at least turn that script into a graphic novel or something!