We will never see what Ben Affleck had planned for The Batman on the big screen. After the terrible reception to Batman vs. Superman and Justice League, the DCEU doesn’t know which way to turn.
Aquaman and Wonder Woman prevents a full reset. Yet somehow Batman is rebooted while his nemesis, The Joker, seems to be retooled as Oscar bait. With JJ Abrams rumoured to be waiting in the wings, then your guess is as good as mine as to just what the hell WB thinks it’s doing. Mountains of coke, probably!
So it’s always interesting to get any information about what might have been. Now we hear some intriguing details from well-regarded cinematographer Robert Richardson who has been out doing press rounds for Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time In Hollywood.
During a chat on the Happy Sad Confused Podcast, he revealed he was attached to The Batman when it was still a Batfleck project.
Said project would’ve starred Affleck himself as the caped crusader, and this was to follow on from Batman Vs. Superman: Dawn Of Justice, Suicide Squad and Justice League.
Richardson offered a glimpse of the premise:
“I wanted to shoot Batman with Ben [Affleck] cause that was the next film we had. There was a script, but not a loved script. There was a lot of work he was doing to it to change it. He was going into the more insanity aspects… He was entering more into the Arkham, he’s going into where everyone was bad… That’s where we were going. I was very interested in that one.”
Arkham Asylum has been portrayed as a Gothic jail in the Schumacher Bat movies, a standard secure institution in Batman Begins and a bedlam style madhouse in Gotham, but the setting in the Rocksteady video games is where it’s potential has been truly realised.
In the comics, Arkham was central to the Bat mythos and featured in many well-regarded stories.
And now we’ll never know if Affleck would have cracked it.
Robert Pattinson will star in The Batman which is casting now for an early 2020 shoot.
