21 Batman Movies That Almost Happened

6. Joel Schumacher'€™s Batman Year One

Around the time development started on Bruce Wayne, Joel Schumacher again pitched the idea for a serious Batman origin story using Frank Miller's Batman: Year One as a source, and this time Warner Bros. seemed a little more game to the idea. He was about to finally get to make the Batman film he had wanted to since Batman Forever, and cast off the shame of Batman & Robin.

Or at least he would have if he hadn't been unceremoniously shunted from his own project.

As a major fan of Frank Miller's darker, seminal work, Schumacher wanted to go back to square one - or year one - and create a prequel to Burton's Batman, which would follow Bruce Wayne travelling the world and then returning to Gotham and becoming the dark knight. That is precisely why the film division didn't want Bruce Wayne the TV show in production as it would ostensibly cover the same ground and they'd be creating competition for themselves.

He might have been ousted pretty quickly as the potential film runner, but modern Batman fans do owe Schumacher the idea to concentrate on Year One, as it persisted until Batman Begins came about in 2004.