12 Shocking Batman Movie Plans That Almost Happened

8. Tom Mankiewicz's Batman Draft

Before Burton's Batman in 1989 was developed, there was a script from Tom Mankiewicz, which has taken on near mythical status, mostly because of how bat-sh*t mental it was. The 1983 treatment was nothing like the final film, and that's very much a good thing.

Mankiewicz's script had both the Penguin and Joker involved as villains (though Penguin was weirdly referred to as "Mr. Boniface"), Robin was in and Silver St. Cloud was the love interest in place of Vicki Vale.

But somewhat problematically, the film had a serious identity issue: it didn't know whether to be a comedy or something much darker, so all of the more consciously grim moments ended up being smushed together with sillier elements.

So the Flying Graysons' death was in there, but it involved them being attacked by a falcon, the Joker chases Batman using a toy helicopter attached to his butt, and Batman finally kills Rupert Thorne by knocking him into a giant pencil sharpener in a recreation of classic 1958 comic story “The Million Dollar Clues”. It was a little... odd, to say the least.