10 Batman And Superman Movies That Almost Got Made

‘Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice’ has kickstarted DC’s cinematic universe into top gear, plotting out their next five years of superhero movies. It’s hard to remember a time, however, when Batman and Superman movies struggled to get made. These ten would-be superhero epics all found themselves shelved before seeing the light of day, although you could argue that, like DC’s heroes, we dodged a bunch of bullets…

'Batman Triumphant’
As impossible as it might sound, Joel Schumacher had no concept of how bad 'Batman & Robin’ was going to be, and had firm plans in place for a sequel named 'Batman Triumphant’ (also known as 'Batman Unchained’). Clooney’s Batman would have faced off against Nicolas Cage’s Scarecrow and Courtney Love’s Harley Quinn, here written as the daughter of The Joker, who would return along with every other villain in the franchise’s history via Batman’s toxin-induced nightmares. The movie, with a script by Mark Protosevitch, was intended to take the franchise back in a more serious direction, but unfortunately, 'Batman & Robin’ was a garbage fire and the stench of hot trash tainted the franchise for an entire decade until Christopher Nolan hosed it off.

'Superman: Flyby’
Superman really struggled to get off the ground in the new millennium, but a script by JJ Abrams came close to production. 'Flyby’ would see much of the movie take place on Krypton, with three Kryptonian villains eventually invading Earth, and Lex Luthor as a CIA agent who was actually a secret Kryptonian. After spurning the talents of Brett Ratner, Warner Bros hired McG (remember him?) to bring the movie to screens, with Ashton Kutcher offered the role of Superman (after Josh Hartnett turned it down), Scarlett Johansson poised to play Lois Lane, Shia LaBeouf cast as Jimmy Olsen and - brilliantly - Johnny Depp in the mix as Lex Luthor. The movie eventually slid into development hell, after it was deemed too expensive to film.

'Batman: Year One’
Darren Aronofsky almost committed to a very different take on the Batman mythos, based on the graphic novel by Frank Miller, who was on-board as screenwriter. “Toss out everything you can imagine about Batman! Everything! We’re starting completely anew!” said the director, and he wasn’t wrong. Bruce Wayne becomes homeless after the death of his parents; Alfred the butler became an African-American mechanic named 'Al’; the Batmobile was just a black Lincoln Continental. The project was abandoned in 2002 after Aronofsky and Miller failed to resolve their substantial differences, but concept art survived and the script can still be found online (see some of it below).

'Superman Lives’

'Superman IV: The Quest For Peace’ was the equivalent of a Kryptonian nail in the coffin of the franchise, so Warner Bros were mighty brave to exhume their flagship hero in a movie originally named 'Superman V: Reborn’. The film went through multiple revisions - including a script by Kevin Smith - until it became Superman Lives, with Batman’s Tim Burton switching sides to direct the Man of Steel, and Nicolas Cage cast as Kal-El. The movie’s production woes are legendary - Kevin Smith tells a great story about hairdresser-turned-producer Jon Peters insisting the film feature a giant spider - and it got as far as costume fitting, with infamous shots of a long-haired Cage wearing the bodysuit, but this Superman crashed and burned in a big way after Burton pulled out. The fully sorry saga is covered in excellent documentary 'The Death Of Superman Lives’.

'World’s Finest: Batman V Superman’

Zack Snyder’s superhero square-off has long been a dream of Hollywood’s: why appeal to one set of comic-book fans when you can make money from two? Warner’s first attempted a Bruce vs Clark dust-up in 2002, when 'The Perfect Storm’ director Wolf Petersen was charged with steering the ship, as Batman and Superman clashed over the murder of Bruce’s wife. The problem was, no one could decide on the tone (the original comic was dark as they come, but Akiva 'Batman & Robin’ Goldsman was, for some reason, brought in to add some humour), or even who would pull on the red pants or the cowl. At one point, actors as disparate as Paul Walker, James Franco, Jude Law and John Travolta were considered for Superman, while a young Christian Bale was considered for Batman. How ridiculous.

'Justice League: Mortal’

Pre-'Fury Road’, George Miller had only directed movies about tap-dancing penguins post-2000, but with the benefit of hindsight, we’d love to have seen his 2008 take on the Justice League. Though it was eventually scuppered by the writers’ strike, 'Justice League: Mortal’ was fully cast and ready to roll, set to effectively kickstart DC’s cinematic universe around the same time Marvel were warming up theirs. Armie Hammer was to play Batman, while DJ Cotrona was cast as Superman, along with rapper Common playing Green Lantern and Megan Gale as Wonder Woman. The project fell apart in 2009, which is shame, because it sounded madder than a truck full of paint-huffing War Boys.

Mark Millar’s 'Godfather’-esque Superman trilogy
Rent-a-gob comic-book penner Mark Millar whipped up a fanboy storm in 2007 when he revealed he had made an offer that Warner Bros couldn’t refuse: a new Superman trilogy. “It’s gonna be like Michael Corleone in the Godfather films,” said Millar. “The entire story from beginning to end, you see where he starts, how he becomes who he becomes, and where that takes him.“ Millar went on to describe his Superman as “an angry god”, and pitched his movie: “I want to start on Krypton, a thousand years ago, and end with Superman alone on Planet Earth, the last being left on the planet, as the yellow sun turns red and starts to supernova, and he loses his powers.” Powerful stuff, and even though Millar claimed he had a “big name” action director in his corner, Warner Bros didn’t go for it. Turns out it was an offer they could refuse.

Michael Bay’s Superman
When Warner Bros removed McG from their long-gestating – and ultimately doomed – Superman project, fans didn’t have to wait for long for a replacement to step into the frame. In 2004, Michael Bay’s official website posted a new post titled 'Superman’, which consisted solely of a chrome Superman logo. That’s a pretty definitive statement, right? Wrong. Bay and Warner Bros were forced to deny rumours that McG had been fired and Bay had been lined up as a replacement, and as the project was going the way of Krypton anyway, we never got to find out what a Michael Bay Superman movie would have been like. (Terrible, obviously, but you knew that).

'Batman III’
Time has been kind to 'Batman Returns’: Tim Burton’s bat-sequel retained the gothic cool of the original and added iconic villains in the form of Michelle Pfeiffer and Danny DeVito. At the time, however, 'Returns’ was not well received – bizarrely, a slew of complaints from McDonald’s customers of all people, upset that the Happy Meal toys promoted a 'violent’ movie, turned the public tide against Burton’s franchise. The director had plans for the movie known as 'Batman III’: Billy Dee Williams’ Harvey Dent would have finally become Two-Face, Robin Williams was poised to play The Riddler and Marlon Wayans was cast as Robin. However, nobody’s heart was in it. Says Burton of meeting Warners: “About half an hour into the meeting, I go, ‘You don’t want me to make another one, do you?'” They didn’t, so they didn’t. Wayans still gets residual cheques in the post: the Robin that never was.

Bryan Singer’s 'Man Of Steel’

Poor old Bryan Singer. He was the only man to understand what truly made a Superman picture fly – compelling characters, deep connections and comic charm – but because his movie didn’t have enough explosions or scowling it was deemed a flop (it still made almost £300 million). Warners, keen to reboot a bigger, more spectacular Superman, gave director Singer and star Brandon Routh a different kind of boot, ending all hope of the proposed sequel that would have, ironically, upped the action quota. “We did explore [a sequel] a little,” said Singer. “Just hammering out ideas. I think Darkseid was going to be the villain. It was pretty world-destroying, actually.“ Sorry cinema fans, Zack Snyder’s miserable whinging Superman is what you asked for and it’s what you’re stuck with.

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Image credits: Rex Features/Wikipedia