Frank Miller, the man many feel is responsible for bringing Batman back into the mainstreams consciousness with The Dark Knight Returns spoke with The Hollywood Reporter about the Darren Aronofsky take on Batman that was never made into a film and why.
He also discusses a bit about the fact that both Daredevil Season 2 and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice are both coming out soon based heavily on his version of the characters.
March is a big month for you in terms of screen adaptations. Batman v. Superman is heavily influenced by your work, and in season two of Daredevil, we’ll see your character Elektra. Do you watch the movies and shows?
No. I didn’t make up Batman, I didn’t make up Daredevil, I have no right to be possessive, but once I’ve worked on a character, it’s hard to see any other way than my way. By and large, most of what they do, I’ll just get grouchy if I see it. So I tend not to look at it, except for few exceptions.
You worked with Darren Aronofsky on a Batman movie project that never got made. What happened there?
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.
Why don’t you turn some of that into a graphic novel?
Maybe I will.
Now considering the fact that Frank Miller turned his Batman into a sadistic kidnapper in All Star Batman & Robin, for him to say Darren Aronofsky’s version was too far is saying a lot. He also mentions that Darren’s version tortured villains and as we saw in one of the trailers for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice that is what Ben Affleck’s version is does with the branding, so is it possible some of Darren Aronofsky’s Batman got put into this new DC Extended Universe?
Read the full Interview on The Hollywood Reporter.
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