In the autumn of 1992, the storytelling adaptations of Batman were at a crossroads.
Tag: Tim Burton
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Week in Review (March 25, 2016)
It’s been a Batman week for me.
For my birthday, my wife (and kid) decorated the dining room in a Batman theme and gave me a Batman cake like I was turning 12 and not 36.
I also wrote a long piece on how Tim Burton’s Batman films are better in memory than in reality.
From Deadpool to Captain America: Civil War to X-Men: Apocalypse to Suicide Squad, we are truly living in the age of the comic book film. Studios pour hundreds of millions of dollars into films that try valiantly to remain true to the source material and translate the artwork of a splash page onto a movie screen.
It wasn’t always this way.
In the mid-to-late ’90s, Warner Brothers began development of a revival of Superman. Kevin Smith even wrote a script for it before Tim Burton became attached and brought in his own writers. He immediately cast Nicholas Cage as Clark Kent and there are rumors that Jim Carrey was in talks to portray Brainiac.
The project never took off for a variety of reasons, a major one being the fact that Batman & Robin was so awful that Warner Brothers decided to remove itself from the entire comic superhero universe for a few years. So Joel Schumacher, who has made some great movies in his life, ruined not only Tim Burton’s Batman franchise but also his Superman franchise.
Still, this is a fascinating film about a film that was never made. Seeing Nicholas Cage with the giant S logo on his chest and listening to what they had planned makes one wonder how it all would have turned out.
Update: The film has been ripped off YouTube so here’s the trailer:
Previously in Documentary Tuesday:
Room 237 | Exit Through the Gift Shop
Christopher Pierznik is the author of eight books, all of which can be purchased in paperback and Kindle. His work has appeared on XXL, Cuepoint, Business Insider, The Cauldron, and many more. He has been quoted on Buzzfeed and Deadspin. Subscribe to his monthly reading review newsletter or follow him on Facebook or Twitter.
