Upon hearing about Warner Bros.' planned Joker origin film, the acclaimed filmmaker says it sounds very similar to his pitch for a wild Batman reboot that was ultimately rejected.
- Sep 14, 2017
AceShowbiz - Acclaimed filmmaker Darren Aronofsky pitched a wild Batman reboot to Warner Bros. over a decade ago, but it was passed over in favor of Christopher Nolan's "Batman Begins". And upon hearing about the studio's planned Joker origin film, Aronofsky says in a new interview that the new project sounds very similar to his rejected Batman pitch.
Aronofsky was promoting his upcoming psychological thriller "mother!", which stars Jennifer Lawrence, when he told First Showing, "You know what, I think it's finally... I think we were basically, whatever it is, fifteen years too early. Because I hear the way they're talking about the Joker movie and that's exactly - that was my pitch."
"I was like: we're going to shoot in East Detroit and East New York. We're not building Gotham," the Oscar-nominated director continued. "The Batmobile - I wanted to be a Lincoln Continental with two bus engines in it... With two bus engines, all duct taped together. It was the duct tape MacGyver Batman."
Aronofsky also believed that some ideas from his script made their way into Zack Snyder's "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice" as it featured a Bruce Wayne who branded criminals, too. "Some of my ideas got out there through other films. Like the ring with 'BW', Bruce Wayne's ring making the scar was our idea and I think that was in Zack [Snyder's] or something. Which is fine, you write these ideas and they get out," he said.
"We were all about reinventing it and trying to make it more 'Taxi Driver' visceral. That was the whole pitch," he shared. "But the toy people were like, 'Oh it can't be a Lincoln Continental, you have to make a Batmobile.' "
The filmmaker also told the site, "And I think with Chris [Nolan's] work... He was able to get the darkness in, and the psychology of the character, yet he was still able to give the gizmo thing, which I wasn't ever really interested in. So, I think that's the back story. I think we were ahead of our time."
"And I was always like, 'Why can't we make a more lower-budget rated-R [movie], just like in comics you have different brands?' but and now they're finally doing that," he added. "They're doing the spin-offs, which is great. This is an exciting time because they'll be able to take more risks and we won't be seeing the same superhero movie over and over again. You'll get things like 'Deadpool', which was a relief as compared to seeing the same film over and over again."
Aronofsky's new movie "mother!" will arrive in the United States this Friday, September 15. Meanwhile, the Joker origin movie is still in early development. Warner Bros. has tapped "The Hangover" filmmaker Todd Phillips to write and direct the new project, which won't star Jared Leto as the Clown Prince of Crime. Phillips is also set to produce along with Martin Scorsese.
