10 Comic Book Movies Hollywood Didn't Have The Balls To Make

For a studio to green-light any project, they have to be fairly confident of a substantial return at the box office; even the greatest film ever made is a colossal failure if it doesn't at least recuperate its budget.

That is precisely why we tend to see the same comic book and superhero films, reinterpreted and repackaged, over and over again. If it's worked before - surely it will work again... It's a flawed logic, of course, because exceptions like The Amazing Spider-Man ruin the model, but you can sort of understand the thinking.

With the marker of success increasingly creeping towards the billion dollar mark, Hollywood mostly refuses to push the boat out into unknown territory for fear of alienating their mainstream demographic. And inevitably, darker or more controversial plot lines from the comics are shunned to avoid cutting off the lucrative family audience.

Given this trepidation, it should come as no surprise that the backlots of Hollywood are strewn with the corpses of some incredibly interesting comic book movies that could have been made, as well as some iconic storylines from the comics that have somehow never made it to a full pitch. When it all boils down, it's simply because nobody in Hollywood has had the balls to do it.

Elements of Frank Miller's Batman: Year One - which chronicles Bruce Wayne's first year as the Caped Crusader and the start of his partnership with James Gordon - can be glimpsed in a lot of the existing live-action movies, though Hollywood has never had the guts to go ahead with a fully-fledged adaptation of this seminal work.

Generally speaking, that reluctance stems from the fact that Year One is a minimalistic take on the iconic character. In other words, this is more "man" than "Batman," with an emphasis on theatrics and detective work over gadgets, the Batmobile, and friendly sidekicks. It's Batman stripped back, not to mention it's gritty as hell.

From a studio executive's point of view, Year One is basically missing all of the things that makes Batman Batman. From a fan perspective, of course, its unique take is what has made Year One such a brilliant work in the canon, but that doesn't mean it wouldn't ultimately prove difficult to sell to wider audiences.

In the early '90s, a Year One film did almost come to exist, set to be helmed by Darren Aronofsky, but in the end, the studio wanted something they could market to kids, and the script that the director produced - with Frank Miller at his side - was deemed to be the very opposite of child-friendly. Well, what did they expect?