True Story Of The Best Batman Movies Never Made

6. 1999 Onwards - Joel Schumacher's Sequels

A lot has been said about Joel Schumacher's Unchained idea and while there's some discussion on how it would have come out, it's probably not one to think of as potentially great. It was, after all, greenlit off the back of Batman & Robin's rushes, so it must have been in the same vein. It's one for the dodged bullet pile, really.

But Schumacher had OTHER ideas. And some were even good. When Unchained was canned, he pitched a take on Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns, with Clint Eastwood and Michael Keaton rumoured to be in poll position to play the older version of Bruce Wayne and David Bowie in line to be the Joker once more. Discussion were as far as it got.

Rather than give Schumacher his own way, the studio came to a compromise by going in a darker direction and returning the character to a more edgy tone centred around fear.

Bruce Wayne would have retired as Batman after realising that his greatest weapon - fear - was no longer effective. At the same time, Dick Grayson is at Gotham University, under the tutelage of Professor Jonathan Crane, who would be using his students as guinea pigs to test out his fear toxins, from where he would become Scarecrow. To complete the fear spectrum, Man-Bat was also going to appear, and Gotham's citizens would believe that he was in fact Batman himself, forcing Wayne to return, clear his name and save Robin.

Ultimately, Warner Bros passed and decided instead to focus on making Year One and Batman Beyond. You know how well they both worked out...