Darren Aronofsky used Batman: Year One as leverage to get The Fountain made

Darren Aronofsky’s Batman movie, Batman: Year One, stands as one of the biggest What Ifs? in comic book movie history. Just ahead of the release of 2000’s Requiem for a Dream, Aronofsky was hired to reboot the character for the big screen, but this obviously didn’t work out. But Aronofsky used his position at the time as leverage to make another film entirely.

As Darren Aronofsky told Josh Horowitz on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, his attention when he was tied to his Batman movie was on something that would be far more divisive. “I was really focused on The Fountain. I really never took that seriously. So I wanted to make The Fountain, that’s where I was at.” He added that his collaborations with Frank Miller – who wrote the four-issue arc in which their screenplay was based on – had moved forward but he was far less interested in Gotham than a famed piece of mythology. “We co-wrote a script but my whole strategy on that one was I wanted to make this totally wild, crazy film about love and the search for the Fountain of Youth. And I felt like if I was on Batman they might let me make it, which is kind of what happened, sort of…That’s a longer story.”

Outside of focusing on The Fountain, Darren Aronofsky said that he’s not sure that his Batman movie would do so well anyway, especially considering the comic book movie landscape at the time. “I think the Batman me and Frank pitched – or wrote – was a really kind of down and dirty duct tape type of movie that was never really going to…It wasn’t going to be selling Batmobiles, you know…I don’t think I was the right guy at the right time. It was rated R…I think a whole world of superhero movies had to first come out to scrape the bottom of that barrel before they would go to rated R films like some of the later ones.”

Of course, Christopher Nolan would pick up where Darren Aronofsky left off, helming his own Batman trilogy which would gross over $2.4 billion worldwide. But one does have to wonder how Aronofsky’s Batman: Year One would have shaken out, not only because he was pitching Joaquin Phoenix as Bruce Wayne but because Warner Bros. wanted…Freddie Prinze Jr.

How do you think Darren Aronofsky’s Batman: Year One would have turned out?

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