Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Joss Whedon's Batman Movie That Never Was

The center off all things cult worship, Joss Whedon, opened up to MTV Splash about his Batman pitch to Warner Brothers, pre-Christopher Nolan. "It wasn’t what they did but the vibe was very similar,” Whedon explained. “Mine was a bit less epic. It was more about the progression of him and it was more in Gotham City. He didn’t go to Tibet and meet cool people, but it was very similar in vibe." Wait, is this script still out there? Can we make more Batman movies please, with Whedon at the helm? Click through for more details on Whedon's Bat-story, plus All-Star Superman writer Grant Morrison's own Hollywood pitch for a Superman movie that ignores Superman Returns.

Whedon claims that his bat pitch was in the same vein as Nolan's, but I still think Whedon deserves his own caped crusader movie. Whedon's bat-story went a little something like this:

“In my version, there was actually a new [villain], it wasn’t one of the classics — which is probably why they didn’t use it,” he explained. “It was more of a 'Hannibal Lector' type — he was somebody already in Arkham Asylum that Bruce went and sort of studied with. It was a whole thing — I get very emotional about it, I still love the story. Maybe I’ll get to do it as a comic one day."

Always the gentleman, Whedon praises Nolan's dark work as worlds above the current directors that cannot seem on encompass what making comic book movies is really all about.

“I thought Christopher Nolan’s done an amazing job of bringing out the comic book, and I see a lot of movies [coughs “HULK”] — sorry, I had a Hulk stuck in my throat — that don’t really have the aesthetic or the pathos or really get why the comic book works.”

In over "what could have been news" both comic book big wigs Grant Morrison, Geoff Johns, Mark Waid, and Brad Meltzer discussed what they would do to make a Superman movie actually heartfelt as well as entertaining. Both Morrison and Johns have pitched Superman reboot films to Warner Bros., and Morrison talked about what his film would do.

First, forget Superman Returns ever existed, and stop trying to make him such a martyr who gets kicked around all the time. But that doesn't mean Morrison would have a totally invulnerable Supes. Instead, his movie pitch to Warner Bros. involved a compressed version of his All-Star Superman arc, about Superman confronting his own mortality.

Original here

3 comments:

taylorf21 said...

its sad that we can't have multiple batman movies going at the same time like in the comic book world, I don't think it would work. but for Joss Whedon to make a batman movie would be a combination of my two favorite things. i love joss whedon and batman is simply the coolest. i really hope he gets to do it in the future

Anonymous said...

Preferably, for everyone who isn't a viral marketer, the next Batman will have a better, relevant, screenplay, a better director and better actors, especially as Batman. The major complaint, obviously, was the terrible, yet overhyped, movie, the atrocious directing, and the terrible, badly-cast, gay actors. If this were imdb there would be more viral marketers here. They're like the cheap hustler telemarketers and telephone technical support of internet media. The next Batman movie needs to be just plain better. Meaning, NO BS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

taylorf21 said...

so you don't like the movie, fine. but why are the actors gay? and even if every single one of them were... why does it matter? i thought the dark knight was awesome and you can feel free to hate it, but saying the actors are gay doesn't help you show that you didn't like it, it's not a synonym for stupid or bad, it just means that they like members of the opposite sex, and personally, i like chronicles of riddick even though vin diesel is gay, i could care less what he does in his bedroom, its what he does on screen that i care about