Screenwriter Akiva Goldsman discusses the status of the darker Joel Schumacher cut of Batman Forever

Joel Schumacher’s career as a whole is actually more impressive than his infamous association with the Batman movies. The late director’s credits include The Client, A Time to Kill, The Lost Boys, Phone Booth and more, but his name seems to be synonymous with either Batman Forever or Batman and Robin. Schumacher had also helmed 8MM from Seven scribe Andrew Kevin Walker, so the director was certainly capable of making a dark, gritty movie. And movie lore has revealed that a darker cut of Batman Forever does exist, even if Warner Bros. keeps blocking its release.

The writer of Batman Forever and Batman and Robin, Akiva Goldsman, recently sat down with The Hollywood Reporter, where the publication asked him if he thinks it will ever see the light of day. Goldsman explained, “After Joel died [in 2020], I reached out to Warners and said, ‘There’s a darker version of this movie.’ We found it. It exists and it’s incomplete, but more complete than you would think. Today there would be giant sections where the VFX wasn’t done. In those days, so much of it was miniatures and practical effects — they were done. We were trying to dust it off, and then everybody stopped caring. But I lobby for it.”

THR then asks Goldsman what some of the differences in the director’s cut included. He replies, “Bruce is having these recurring visions of a red book, which turns out to be his father’s diary. There’s an entry that says, ‘Martha and I want to stay home tonight. Bruce wants to see a movie, so we’re going to take him out.’ So he holds himself responsible [for their deaths]. There’s a section in the movie where he actually is hit in the head. He doesn’t remember that he’s Batman, and he goes back into the cave. There’s this now rather famous Rick Baker bat that he faces.”

Clocking in anywhere between two hours and 38 minutes and 170 minutes depending on the specific version, some of the key changes in the Schumacher Cut of Batman Forever are a new opening with Two Face escaping from Arkham Asylum, training featuring Dick Grayson / Robin and the aforementioned scene featuring Val Kilmer and an enormous bat.

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