12 Crazy Sequel Pitches That Almost Ruined Great Films

4. Batman Triumphant (Unchained)

If Joel Schumacher could have just waited to do his "best" (i.e. worst) work until after Batman & Robin had come out, we could have seen what sounds like the most ridiculous Batman movie ever conceived, in the shape of Batman Triumphant, the heavily mooted follow-up to the Arnold Schwarzenegger-featuring Day-Glo attrocity that was the final cartoonish Batman film before Nolan brought darkness back to the knight.

The plot was actually not awful - the Scarecrow was set to terrorise Gotham with his nerve toxins, bringing the Joker back as a hallucination, and there would be appearances for Harley Quinn (who would be The Joker's daughter) and Man-Bat would pop up as well, since three villains wasn't enough in Batman & Robin. Sounds pretty solid, and the nerve toxin sequences might have been good if they had an accomplished director to handle them - but sadly they had Joel Schumacher, who would probably have just painted everything illuminous.

And of course, the rumoured casting is just the icing on the cake here - first off the Scarecrow was due to be Howard Stern (probably only because he looked a bit shaggy?), and it then could have been Nic Cage. Oh and Madonna was going to play Harley Quinn. Really, really great choices.

But the most ridiculous thing of all was that Batman Triumphant was actually optioned by Warner Bros midway through filming of Batman & Robin, who were so impressed with the dailies that they immediately wanted to get work sorted on the next one. Quite what they were actually watching at the time remains to be seen, because it certainly wasn't Batman & Robin.

It is probably true that Triumphant would have completely ruined the Batman franchise had it come out, but then we never got the chance to see it happen after the God-awful mess that was Batman & Robin tanked so spectacularly.