Darren Aronofsky wants everyone to know he pitched a R-rated Batman film 15 years ago
Warner Bros. recruited Darren Aronofsky for the later-scrapped Batman project
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Though gritty and morbid comic book adaptations feel commonplace at this point—especially within the world of Gotham—Darren Aronofsky shares he pitched a R-rated Batman feature years before they became the norm for superheroes. Though it never came to fruition, The Whale director penned a script for Batman: Year One with the renowned Frank Miller before Christopher Nolan took the reins of the franchise.
“It was after Batman & Robin, the Joel Schumacher one,” Aronofsky says in a new interview with Variety. “That had been a big hiccup back then at Warner Bros., so I pitched them a rated-R, boiled-down origin story of Batman. A rated-R superhero movie was probably 10 to 15 years out of whack with the reality of the business then.”
Aronofsky’s adaptation would not have been the first major superhero film to receive the R-rating, as Stephen Norrington’s Blade took that title in 1998. However, the director still reflects on the sharp turn it could have taken the DC universe back then.
“It had promise, but it was just a first draft,” Aronofsky says. “The studio wasn’t really interested. It was a very different take.”
If Aronofsky had it his way, the entire fate of the Batman film universe would have shaped up to be a little different, especially if Joaquin Phoenix had filled the role of our gloomy hero.
“The studio wanted Freddie Prinze Jr and I wanted Joaquin Phoenix,” Aronofsky said back in 2020. “I remember thinking, ‘Uh oh, we’re making two different films here.’ That’s a true story. It was a different time.”
A different time indeed. Though the auteur now creates films that seem at odds with the Superhero Movie Industrial Complex, Aronofsky says diving back into the world of heroes and villains is not out of the question for his career.
“I wasn’t a comic book kid, but I grew up on big movies and I go see superhero films and I like them,” he says. “If the right opportunity came around, I’d do it.”
Maybe he still has that first draft tucked away somewhere.
26 Comments
Now I know
And knowing is – in this case – the entire battle.
Yeah, it was one of the reccuring jokes on the AVC back in the day. Gordon keeps drinking beers and cheating on his wife.
I thought it was Ain’t It Cool News that made the “Jim Gordon drinks a beer and cheats on his wife” thing.
Yes, but did you say “a R-rated”? A?
“a rated-R” is what it says he said.
Who says?
Dey.
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It’s what it says, but it shouldn’t. Even if it says so in the quote within the article (and if Aronofsky actually expressed it that way, which I doubt, it’s missing a sic).
I thought the “you” you were referring to was Aronofsky, and he didn’t say “a R-rated.” He said “a rated-R,” which doesn’t need a sic, as there’s nothing wrong with it.
My ‘you’ was addressing the author of the article. But then after your comment I re-read it and my eyes ‘saw’ Aronofsky saying it too… when he didn’t as you correctly point out. So it’s just the dumb-as-hell headline, plus my unfortunate subsequent mis-reading. But for heaven’s sake… “a R-rated” is poor. Oh well. Time to let it go (until I next get pissed off at some grammatical crime).
I have the benefit of only scanning AVClub articles at this point, so it saves my eyes some of these mistakes.
I don’t know if it’s still around, but there was a time when the draft was available online.
I read some of it, it was weird.
I don’t think you can say Blade was the first R rated superhero movie, but it’s funny what certain comic movies got rated. So Blade was about hunting vampires and preventing an evil god from killing humanity, came out in 98 and was rated R. But Spawn, a movie about a guy making a deal with the devil, living part time in hell, and chosen to lead an evil army on earth came out in 97 and was released as PG-13—but the original cut was R, and both versions were released on home video. And less than a decade after Blade you have Ghost Rider, a movie about a guy who sells his soul, bonds with a demon, splits time between hell and earth fighting more demons: PG-13. Also, what about Sam Raimi’s R-Rated Darkman from 1990? Made when he couldn’t get the rights to The Shadow, and came out between the Keaton Batman movies. Danny Elfman soundtrack: check. Future Batman villain Liam Neeson: check. Comics, action figures and movie sequels? Yes to all three. To go further down the wiki rabbit hole, Blade almost was something else entirely. The studio wanted the original Blade movie to be a light-hearted spoof and wanted to cast a white actor. And after Wesley Snipes unsuccessfully campaigned to make a Marvel Black Panther movie in the mid-90s, he was tapped for this.
a R-rated —> an R-ratedThe Whale director —> the Whale director / the The Whale director (I know these both look weird, but “The Whale director” is straight up missing an essential “the”)R-rating —> R ratingthe sharp turn it could have taken the DC universe back then —> not how language worksFreddie Prinze Jr —> Freddie Prinze Jr.
“Aronofsky’s adaptation would not have been the first major superhero film to receive the R-rating, as Stephen Norrington’s Blade took that title in 1998. However, the director still reflects on the sharp turn it could have taken the DC universe back then.”The whole paragraph defies anything resembling syntax.
Freddie Prinze Jr. —> WTF year is it?!
They should hire you
Yeah, or literally any 4th grader who’s passing English class. The writers could even take two and a half extra minutes to proofread it themselves. I mean, I assume they all had to write loads of papers in school, and they at least know that there do indeed exist rules for things like hyphens, em dashes, colons, capitalization, etc. etc. And they know what they’ve memorized and what they maybe ought to Google real quick; they just don’t care.And those rules are not just arbitrary; they’re the linchpin that holds together all the gloriously diverse ways we speak and type. “I can haz cheezburger?” wouldn’t look like a cute thing a cat might say if we didn’t have the actual proper grammar to compare it to. Tweets can be very funny or moving due to their blunt efficiency, but their novelty depends on also having extravagance.But nah, it’s totally cool and punk rock to do active harm to the entire English language in all its forms. No big whoop
…this has literally been known since fifteen years ago.
The Whale could be the name of a superhero. You missed your chance to make a superhero calling card, Darren!
There still hasn’t been an R-rated Batman movie (Joker is not a Batman movie).
I would say one or two of the Batman films, including the latest one, have been R-Rated, it’s just that they were formally rated PG-13 after big sacks with $ signs on them mysteriously appeared on the MPAA’s desk
Do you know of them getting re-rated? I often hear about films being re-edited for ratings (and sometimes directors then releasing their original cut anyway), but I don’t know if there are records of that available.
No, I was just joking, sorry if that wasn’t clear (although it’s a commonly held belief that the MPAA are much more lenient with major studio releases than they are independents). I do seriously think it’s pretty absurd The Batman didn’t get an R-Rating. I’m not saying no one under 17 couldn’t handle it, that’s for kids and parents to discuss themselves, but a rating that encompasses that and, say, Ghostbusters: Afterlife and Ant-Man and the Wasp is a rating that’s grown too broad.
“Wants everyone to know” is kind of a pissy way to put it. It makes it sound like he’s whining about it endlessly, when he just talked about it in what was likely his umpteenth interview that day for his Nutty Professor remake.
I would suggest just editing the headline to read “Whiny Bitch Boy Says Shit” if you just want to be a dick about it.