21 Batman Movies That Almost Happened

5. Darren Aronofsky's Year One

Even without Joel Schumacher, who had pitched the idea initially, in September 2000, Warner Bros. hired Darren Aronosky to take over Year One, with Aaron Eckhart apparently attached as Jim Gordon, and a cavalcade of actors - including Ben Affleck and Cristian Bale - were considered for Batman.

The film would have been based on a script by Frank Miller, and would have followed Bruce Wayne as an orphan on the streets of Gotham, stripped of his fortune but taken in like Oliver Twist by an Alfred surrogate called Big Al, who ran an autoshop with his son, Little Al. From there it would have followed a similar track to Taxi Driver, as Wayne grew to develop a hatred of the worst parts of Gotham's culture of crime, until eventually pulling on the cowl, and ignoring some probable mental issues. Gordon was to be a hard-nosed cop, Selina Kyle a prostitute and ultimately nothing would have really been as exxpected.

Which is perhaps why Warner Bros. decided to reject Millers' script - though retaining the idea of the Bat-mobile as a tank for later - because of its deviation from the source. Initially Aronofsky stayed attached to the project as director, but then the success of the Matrix drew Warner Bros' attention elsewhere.