Category Archives: From vision to film

FlixChatter’s From-Vision-t0-Film series. Have you ever seen a film and then wonder what would happen if they were done differently? Well, in Hollywood, about 70% of films that they produced had different visions initially.

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TAKE TWO: How would these films turn out had these directors made them?

Many of us who follows Hollywood knows that a film goes through several writing stages before it hits the big screen; we also know that many directors were involved in this process, most of the time these directors decided to leave the project on their own terms or get fired by the studio. Then the studio would bring in another director to take over the project, sometimes it works out, many times the second or third director would end up leaving or get fired from the movie.

A couple of weeks ago I saw Mission Impossible 3 playing on TV and thought to myself, this film really blows and I really wished Cruise and Paramount went with David Fincher’s version. (You can read here as to why that didn’t happened).

So I decided to come up with a list of films that could’ve been directed by a different director and maybe the final product might be better than the ones we got.

Watchmen

Back in the late 80s, Terry Gilliam was put in charge of bringing the popular graphic novel to the big screen. The studio hired Sam Hamm to write the script, for those of you who are old enough, you probably remember Hamm; he wrote Tim Burton’s Batman and was the most popular writer in Hollywood at that time. But after several attempts at rewriting the script, Gilliam determined that the project just won’t work for the big screen and suggested that it should be made into a mini-series. Well, the studio disagree and so he left the project. By the way, if you want to read Hamm’s Watchmen script, I believe it’s available online but be warned, it’s quite awful.

So in early 2000s, Paramount hired Paul Greengrass to take over the project and his version was going to take place in our modern day society. In fact Paramount has so much faith in the movie; they even set up a website for it, well over a year before the film’s release date; it was scheduled to open in the summer 2006. Well in early 2005, Paramount then CEO Sherry Lansing decided to step down and Brad Grey took over. When Grey became the CEO, his first priority was to cut many of Paramount’s big tentpole projects, of course this includes Watchmen. Originally Paramount was going to have two big films opening in summer of 2006, Grey decided to just release one and the one he chose was Mission: Impossible 3. Now, I don’t blame Grey for making that decision because the M:I films are a well known franchise while not many people know anything about Watchmen.

I do feel bad for Greengrass and his team though since they worked on the project for several months trying to bring Watchmen to the big screen and suddenly they’re jobless. Of course things turned out well Greengrass, after he lost the gig he went and made United 93, which he got nominated for an Oscar and then he made The Bourne Ultimatum, which became the highest earning film of that franchise. M:I-3 on the other hand was a box office disappointment. I couldn’t stop thinking though, how would Watchmen turn out had Greengrass directed it? I’m pretty sure it would’ve been much better than Snyder’s bloated and too much slow motion crap fest.

Mission: Impossible 2

After the massive success of the first M:I film, Paramount and Tom Cruise wanted to move quick and make a sequel. They got Oliver Stone to come on board as the director after Brian De Palma declined to come back to do another one. Stone and screenwriter Robert Towne came up with plot about a big pharmaceutical company trying to spread a deadly virus to the world and the M:I team has to stop them. I remember Stone even tried to convince Paul Newman to come out of retirement and appear in this movie, he would’ve played Cruise’s Ethan Hunt’s boss, which went to Anthony Hopkins in the final film. The film was scheduled to open in the summer of 1999 but Cruise was stuck shooting Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, so they had to push the shooting date of this film way back. After several months of waiting, Stone decided he couldn’t wait any longer and left the project so he could shoot Any Given Sunday.

After Stone left, the project was handed to John Woo, who’s still high on the success of Face/Off. When Woo took over the movie, he told Robert Towne to rewrite the script and make it more of action/romance which is what we got. Now I enjoyed M:I-2, but I really would have love to see what Stone could’ve done with the movie. I’m pretty sure his version won’t have tons of doves flying around, slow-mo shootouts and cheesy love triangle storyline.

I Am Legend

Back in the late 1990s, Warner Bros. was gearing up for their 75th anniversary celebration and they wanted to release two big films in the same year. The new Superman film was supposed to come out in summer of 1998 and for the holiday season they were going to release a remake of I Am Legend. Ridley Scott signed on to direct and Arnold was inked as the leading man. Mark Protosevich wrote the script that was truer to the original novel, minus the one liners intended for Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Everything was ready to go until they did some math and realized the film would cost well over $100mil to make. Remember this was back in the 90s, so a $100mil film was rare. By comparison, today the average cost to make a tent-pole picture is $150mil. Well, after they couldn’t figure out how to bring down the price tag, the project was put on hold.

The film finally opened in December of 2007, almost ten years after its original release date. Of course we all know it starred Will Smith and directed by Francis Lawrence. I enjoyed this version but I think Scott would’ve done a better job than Lawrence.

Dune

Alejandro Jodorowsky spent years in the 70s trying to bring this popular sci-fi book to the big screen, but after he spent millions on pre-production, he ran out of money and couldn’t shoot it. According to Frank Herbert, the author of the book, Jodorowsky’s script was the size of a phone book and it would’ve been a 14 hours movie, which was one of the reasons why it never made it to the big screen.

So in the late 70s, the film rights were sold to producer Dino De Laurentiis and he hired Ridley Scott to take over the project. Scott intended to split the book into two movies but after realizing it would take over 2 years to complete the movie, he decided he didn’t have the strength to do it. Also, his older brother has just passed away around that time, so he needed time off to grief.

In the early 80s, De Laurentiis decided to hire David Lynch to direct the movie because he was so impress with Lynch’s previous movie, The Elephant Man. Lynch decided to take over the screenwriting duty as well, even though he’d never read the book. After a 135 pages script was finished, Lynch started shooting the film in early 1983. The film finally came out in December of 1984 and it was a huge box office failure. Lynch was so distraught by the film’s failure, he vowed to never again work on a big budget movie.

Dune is one of a rare film where I didn’t hate it but didn’t really like it either, but every time it’s on TV, I’d watch it. In fact I bought a Blu-ray version last year and watched the entire thing again. I always wonder what kind of film it would be had Jodorowsky or Scott directed it.

A.I. Artificial Intelligence

Originally Stanley Kubrick was going to direct this movie, in fact he started developing the concept of the film way back in the 70s. By the 80s, he thought the technology was ready and he hired a few writers to write the script for him. He didn’t want to hire a kid actor to play the lead role, so he went to automobile manufacture such as Honda and Toyota and asked them if they could build him a realistic child robot that he can use for filming. Of course they told him that was impossible, so he decided to put the project on hold until the technology would be more advance.

In the early 90s after he saw Jurassic Park, he thought the technology was indeed ready and he again started working on the script. But when he saw some CGI pre-visualizations, he was not impressed and again he put the project on hold. He decided to start working on his other movie, Eyes Wide Shut, hoping by the time he finishes this film, the technology would be advanced enough so he could start shooting A.I. Unfortunately he passed away in early 1999 and we never know what his version of the film would’ve been like. From what I remember reading, his version would have been much more darker than Spielberg’s and it wouldn’t have included that “happy” ending with the super intelligent robots ruling the earth.

– Post by Ted S.

You can find all of Ted’s contributions here.

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So folks what do you think? Do you wish these films were directed by another filmmaker or are you a fan of the final product? Also, feel free to name other films you thought could’ve been better with a different director behind the camera.

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Guest Post – A remake that’s actually worth seeing: Fahrenheit 451

By Ted Saydalavong

Around mid 1990s, Mel Gibson pitched a remake of Fahrenheit 451 to Warner Bros. and they agreed to let him shoot it. Gibson had directed two films so far, The Man without a Face and Braveheart, he won an Oscar for the latter. So while in his directing mode he wanted to remake Fahrenheit 451 and at one point he was thinking of starring in it too. But he realized he was too old for the role and also because he already directed and starred on both Man without a Face and Braveheart, he just didn’t want to go through that again. So with a new script that stayed true to the book and the support from the studio, he was looking for a leading man. He pursued Tom Cruise around 1997 and he already had a team doing some pre-production work on set designs. The movie was going to be set 50 years in future. At the time, Cruise has just started shooting Eyes Wide Shutwith Stanley Kubrick and couldn’t commit to the project. So Gibson decided to wait for Cruise to finish shooting Kubrick’s film and he went and did Lethal Weapon 4 (the worst Lethal Weapon film IMO).

But when the shoot of Eyes Wide Shut went longer than expected, Gibson couldn’t wait for Cruise anymore because the studio had scheduled Fahrenheit 451 to come out in the summer of 2000 and also Cruise had committed to shooting Mission: Impossible 2 and Minority Report back to back.
M:I-2 was supposed to come out summer 1999 and Minority Report in summer 2000. Of course as you all remembered, M:I-2 came out in summer 2000 and Minority Report in 2002, the long shoot of Eyes Wide Shut really cost Cruise a few of potential box office hits, with Enemy of the States and Fahrenheit 451 being two of them. I’ll come back to why I brought up Minority Report later in the story.

So around 1998, Gibson was under pressure to look for a new leading man and also he realized that he needed to update the script for modern day audience, this was the era when the internet was starting to dominate the world. The role was offered to Brad Pitt but he was not interested, opting to do The Fight Club instead with David Fincher. Rumor has it that Gibson even offered the role to Johnny Depp, but at the time Depp refused to do big budget studio films.  Remember this was few years before Pirates of the Caribbean. With no leading man and a script that still in need of some retooling, Gibson informed the studio that he cannot finish in time for the summer of 2000 release and the project was put on limbo a couple of years later. Warner Bros. just had a lot of troubles trying to remake a few movies back in the 90s (read about Tim Burton’s Superman here).

Frank Darabont

Fast forward to mid 2000s, the project landed on the hands of Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile), he rewrote the script and pitched it to the studio. He even got Tom Hanks to come on board to play the leading man. The studio executives were interested but they didn’t green light the project, yet. Darabont had a new film opening at the time, The Mist. I believe the studio executives wanted to see how that movie performs at the box office before giving Darabont $150 mil to shoot Fahrenheit 451. The Mist opened and it failed miserably at the box office and of course the executives pulled out of Fahrenheit 451. On top of that,  in late 2007 Tom Hanks decided to leave the project, leaving it without a leading man. Last I heard, Darabont is still shopping the script around Hollywood, hoping another studio will pick it up.

Personally I would love to see this remake on the big screen, I mean I Am Legend went through some hell before it finally hit the big screen, so hopefully we’ll see the new version of Fahrenheit 451 playing at the local cinemas real soon.

Now back as to why I brought up Minority Report, well Spielberg and Cruise were going to shoot this film around 1999, but because Cruise was stuck doing Eyes Wide Shut and he wanted to do M: I-2 right after, they had to reschedule. Also, Kubrick passed away in 1999, so Spielberg wanted to do AI: Artificial Intelligence to honor him. So when both Cruise and Spielberg finally got together to shoot Minority Report in 2001, Spielberg decided to bring the team that was building the sets for Fahrenheit 451 over to Minority Report. So if you’ve already seen that sci-fi movie, then you’ve seen what Gibson had envisioned for the look of Fahrenheit 451.

Have you seen the François Truffaut original? What do you think of this remake idea?

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Guest Post – From Vision to Film: ALIEN 3

Happy Friday all! It’s been nearly three months since we got a Vision-to-Film post from guest blogger Ted S. Last time we got the story on Superman Returns, and now we’ve got David Fincher’s Alien 3. I’ve been saving this to coincide with his recently-released Facebook movie The Social Network, as well as the upcoming Blu-ray release of the Alien Anthology coming on October 26th. The piece below could also be called the David Fincher story :D

After the success of James Cameron’s Aliens, 20th Century Fox wanted to bring [the lead character] Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) and her nemesis back to the big screen by the summer of 1992. First they offered the project to Renny Harlin, but he had wanted to do Die Hard 2. So they brought in Vincent Ward to write and direct the picture instead. Before Ward came on board, there were several versions of the film that were pitched to the studio, in one version it focused entirely on Hicks, Bishop and Newt. The story would tie up loose ends from the preceding film with Newt returning to Earth to live with her grandparents, as well as Hicks and Bishop and a new team of Colonial Marines battling a rival faction of planets who use the Alien as a bio-weapon. Of course the studio didn’t greet light that version, probably because of budget concerns and the fact that Ripley was absent in the story.

In Ward’s version, the story involved a wooded planet and a group of monks who thought they were living in post-apocalyptic dark ages, and had a middle-ages lifestyle. The group refused all kinds of modern technology, and when Ripley and the alien crash-land on Earth they would blame Ripley for the alien attacks. Ripley was to be impregnated by the alien “the old-fashioned way” rather than through a face-hugger, and therefore being impregnated with a human-alien hybrid. According to the storyboards, she would dream of half human-half alien hybrids. Other storyboards included horse-alien and sheep-alien hybrids. Ward left the project after the producers insisted that he change the monks to prisoners and drop the wooded planet idea. In the documentary about this film, which is available on the special Alien Anthology edition released on DVD a few years back, the crew in London actually built sets of wooden planets for the shoot. A month before the shooting date, the studio told the crew to stop working while they look for a new director and rewrite the script.

David Fincher

So in order to make the summer of 1992 release date, Fox and the producers were scrambling to find another director, at one point Walter Hill (one of the producers of the film), was going to take the directing gig himself. But luckily they found the up and coming young director David Fincher. Around this time, Fincher had done mostly music videos, so he was affordable and would practically do whatever the studio tells him. Or so they thought. In the first meeting with the executives, Fincher pitched his own version of the film and said that he wanted to expand from the original script. Rumors been going around for years that Fox actually has Fincher’s version of the film in storage somewhere but refuses to show it to the public. Those rumors turned out to be false because had Fincher actually shot his version, the budget would’ve tripled and the film wouldn’t have made the release date. Also, in the special edition DVD, Fox included the director’s cut of the film which is much better than the theatrical version. They even asked Fincher if he wanted to come back to work on the film before it was released on DVD. He declined the offer since he disowned the film years ago.

Anyways, after Fincher met with the studio people, he thought he was going to make his version of an Alien film. Well, apparently he was in for a big surprise. On the first day of shooting, he wanted to shoot a big sequence, but the producers on the set told him that he couldn’t do that. Fincher had no idea that he was being monitored by the studio from the beginning, they actually hired a guy whose job was to keep an eye on Fincher’s every move and report back daily to the executives. Believe it or not, this guy got credited in the film as an Executive Producer. About a month into shooting, Fincher finally realized that he wouldn’t be able to shoot his version of the movie and that he basically got screwed by the studio. He then left the project before editing began.

Fincher and Sigourney Weaver on the set

The film made its May 1992 release date and earned some money. But considering it had cost around $60 mil to make and it only made about $50 mil back, it was a huge disappointment for Fox. Also, this was the summer of big franchises – Batman Returns made big money, so did Lethal Weapon 3. So I’m sure Fox executives weren’t too happy how the film performed that year. Fincher didn’t do much better himself. After the box office disappointment of Alien 3; his directing career seemed to be pretty much over. He was to blame for the lack success of the film, even though it wasn’t his fault. He was simply here to finish the project that Fox should have cancelled from the beginning.

But then three years later, Fincher made the classic thriller Se7en, and has since directed The Game, Fight Club, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and the recent hit The Social Network. Now he’s one of the top directors in the business today, and now currently filming the Hollywood version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. As for the Alien franchise, well Fox decided to come out with another sequel, the awful Alien: Resurrection follow by the even more awful Alien vs. Predator films. Currently Ridley Scott is working on the prequel to Alien, this one will take place several years before the event of the first film. Let’s hope Sir Ridley Scott can finally make a good Alien film again, I guess we’ll find out sometime next year.

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From Vision to Film: Superman Returns

Welcome to the second edition of FlixChatter’s From-Vision-t0-Film series. Have you ever seen a film and then wonder what would happen if they were done differently? Well, in Hollywood, about 70% of films that they produced had different visions initially.

This post is courtesy of special guest blogger Ted Saydalavong, a movie trivia aficionado who shares my affinity for superhero movies. If you haven’t read Ted’s first post on Batman Begins, you can check it out here. Now, here’s an in-depth look of how Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns finally took flight:

Way back the mid-90s Warner Bros. wanted to reboot their Superman franchise, so they decide to hire Kevin Smith (hot off his first film Clerks) to write a script for the new version of The Man of Steel. Smith, a self-proclaim super comic book super geek, was hired to write a screenplay based on The Death of Superman comic book series where Superman was killed and came back. The screenplay was titled Superman Lives. After he finished script, he showed it to the studio executives and they loved it. But the producer of the film, Jon Peters, hasn’t read it yet. Around this time, Peters was still a powerful producer, he made a lot of money for Warner Bros. He was the producer of Tim Burton’s Batman, so he has the final say if the new Superman film is a go or not.

So Smith met with Peters and Peters said he loved the script, but he wanted to add a sidekick for the villain Brainiac and that the story must include a giant robot spider for no good reason what so ever. (The giant robot spider did appear in a film that Peters produced, the awful Wild Wild West.) So anyways, Smith said he’ll re-write the script to include a sidekick and giant spider robot. Now this is where things got complicated, Peters brought on Tim Burton to the project. Burton like Smith’s script but decided he wanted to change a few things. He told Peters that there won’t be a sidekick or a giant robot spider, since Burton is a big shot, Peters didn’t object. By now Kevin Smith was practically kicked to the curb and he was out of the project. He begged the studio to let him meet with Burton so he can explain how he had envisioned the new Superman, but Burton just refused to meet with him and he already brought in his own writers. If you want to listen Kevin Smith talk about his involvement with this project, see it below, it’s quite funny:

So now with Burton on board, everyone is happy since he already made two very successful Batman films. The script has been approved by the studio, Burton’s next task was to cast the new Man of Steel and his choice was quite surprising. Burton’s one and only choice for the new Superman was Nicholas Cage. Remember, this was a time when Cage was on top of the world – he recently won an Oscar for Leaving Las Vegas and his three big action films The Rock, Con Air and Face/Off made quite a bit of cash at the box office. He confirmed that he was going to be the new Superman on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno while promoting Face/Off. He even told Jay that he won’t be wearing a cape in the new version of Superman.

A Japanese Tim Burton fan site actually leaked a test photo of the actor in the red and blue suit

Also, if you do some hard searching online, you might find a poster of Superman Reborn, Warner had scheduled the film to be release on June of 1998 to celebrate the studio’s 75th anniversary. I remember seeing the poster in movie theaters in the summer of 1997; the poster has a big red S and the word Reborn Next Summer on it. The rest of cast would have included Cameron Diaz as Lois Lane, Kevin Spacey as Lex Luthor (rumor has it that Burton asked Jack Nicholson to play Lex but Jack didn’t want to play another big name villain since he already played the Joker) and Chris Rock as Jimmy Olsen.

With casting in place, Burton and company was about to start principal photography, but the studio executives had some concerns about the budget. They had green-lit the project for $100 mil, however, in the script the first big action sequence in the film will cost at least $30 mil to shoot. So they asked Burton and his writers to re-write the script and tone down some of the big action set pieces to save some money. By then the film couldn’t make the June of 98 release date because they had to re-write the script, so the studio pushed the date back to summer of 1999. The new script was handed in to the studio, and they still thought the budget would get out of control. Again they asked Burton to restructure the script, so now the release date got pushed again to Christmas of 1999. Well, in the fall of 1998, Warner Bros. then announced that they’ve decided to shut down the production of the new Superman film because of budget concerns. Burton had already left the project a few months prior so he can start working on Sleepy Hollow. In an interview back in 2006 around the time Superman Returns came out, Burton said he’d already made a new Superman film but he never got to shoot it. I think he spent like close to two years trying to get his version of Superman off the ground but couldn’t.

Supes possible helmers: Tim Burton, Kevin Smith, Wolfgang Petersen, Michael Bay, McG and Brett Ratner

Director Bryan Singer on the set of Superman Returns with Brandon Routh

Director Bryan Singer on the set of Superman Returns with Brandon Routh

In early 2000s, Warner decided to get the project back on the ground because comic book-based films have been making money left and right, Spiderman and X-Men films were raking in a lot of cash for other movie studios. The list of directors who came on board to try and tackle the project were Michael Bay, McG, Wolfgan Petersen and Brett Ratner. They even brought in J.J. Abrams to re-write to script, he basically threw out Kevin Smith and Tim Burton’s script and wrote his own version. In fact, the studio liked it so much that wanted to shoot his version with Brett Ratner as the director. Abrams’ version was basically another re-telling the origin of Superman. Ratner even hired Anothony Hopkins to play Supe’s father. The reason why Abrams version never happened was that Ratner and the studio couldn’t agree on who should play the new man of steel. Rumor has it that Ratner wanted Josh Harnett while the studio wanted Brenda Fraser. Of course Ratner eventually left the project and then he got the gig to direct X-Men 3. This is when Singer pitched his version and the rest is history.

P.S. An interesting swap indeed, given that Bryan Singer’s the one who brought us X-Men, thereby launching the whole superhero franchise in Hollywood that continues until today.

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A Flix Odyssey – From Vision to Film: Batman Begins

Inception Countdown Post #2

As you probably know, I’m a sucker for movie trivia. I love reading tidbits about casting and behind-the-scenes stuff about film productions. I’m not talking about gossips about which actors are hooking up with who, now that’s TMZ territory I don’t care for. What intrigues me is the journey how certain flicks go from vision to the actual version released in theaters. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that for most films, the finished piece has been greatly altered from its original vision and the drama that go on in the making-of process is likely far more convoluted than whatever is going on in the movie itself!

Well, in the next few weeks, FlixChatter will be featuring guest posts from my colleague and fellow movie buff Ted Saydalavong, who’s like a walking encyclopedia on behind-the-scenes trivia! As this week is dedicated to Christopher Nolan’s Inception, why not start with my favorite of Nolan’s work. So here is a cliff notes version of the Batman Begins‘ history.

After the Batman & Robin debacle, Warner Bros. wanted to reboot their most lucrative franchise and so they went out and hired a lot of writers and directors to see who can come up with the most creative ideas to restart the franchise.

First they decided to adapt the animated cartoon Batman Beyond for the big screen. This version takes place in the future where Bruce Wayne is an old man and he’s training a young protégé to be the new Batman. In fact Clint Eastwood was asked if he’s willing to play the old Bruce Wayne/Batman, he said he would if he’s was younger. I believe around this time Eastwood was well into his 70s and he said he didn’t want to run around and kicking ass at that age. A little tidbit, Nolan actually asked Eastwood if he wants to be in Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, he was supposed to play the commissioner in Begins and the mayor in TDK. He couldn’t do it because he was busy filming his own movies, but he said if Nolan asked him again to be in the new Batman flick, he’d make time. So expect to see Eastwood in the next Batman film. As for the young Batman to be, there were lots of actors who auditioned for the role, these include Aston Kutcher, Joshua Jackson and Jake Gyllenhaal just to name a few.

After they read the screenplay from the animated show’s writers, they didn’t like what they read and decided to go another route. In came director Darren Aronofsky (Requiem for a Dream, The Wrestler), he asked Frank Miller (the man who pretty much reboot the Batman franchise in the comic books) to help him write the script. Miller wrote the first treatment based on his graphic novel Batman: Year One, also the name of the script, which you can read in full here. In this version, the setup is similar to Batman Begins: Bruce Wayne left Gotham for a few years and came back to the even more corrupted city. As the story begins we see Bruce as some kind of bum and homeless, he’s still upset about loss of his parents. This version is very low tech compare to Batman Begins, but very gritty and violent. There’s no Alfred in this version, only a mechanic whom Bruce works for and he refers to him as Big Al. Also, the main villain is the police commissioner Loeb, so no Joker, Two-Face or Scarecrow yet.

Year One is more of a detective story; the plot is really about Bruce Wayne becoming Batman while trying to accept the deaths of his parents. He does a lot detective work, trying to take down thugs, pimps and gangsters. The script also focuses Jim Gordon, in this version he is trying to take down the dirty police force by himself but as the story progresses, he gets help from Batman. As I mentioned earlier, this script is quite violent so had they made the movie, it would’ve gotten a hard R rating. Oh yeah, Miller did introduce Selina Kyle a.k.a Catwoman but she starts out as hooker who meets Bruce near the beginning of the story. He also hints a bit about bringing in The Joker, similar to what Nolan did at the end of Batman Begins.

Well, after Aronofsky and Miller finished the script, they handed it into the studio. Not surprisingly, they rejected the idea, instead they asked Aronofsky to tone down the violence and make it a more conventional storyline, such as bringing back Alfred and not make Catwoman a prostitute. Aronofsky refused and left the project.

In late 2002 early 2003, the studio hired Wolfgang Petersen (Das Boot, The Perfect Storm) to direct Batman vs. Superman since they couldn’t get either one of the superhero films off the ground separately. The script was green-lit and they begun the casting process. Christian Bale was actually close to becoming the new Man of Steel, not The Dark Knight. If I remember correctly, they wanted some unknown for Batman/Bruce Wayne role. So while Petersen was searching for the new Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent, the studio suddenly decided to shut down production. As a consolation, the studio offered Petersen a chance to direct Troy and of course he accepted.

Now, I don’t know why the studio decided to abruptly canceled Batman vs. Superman, but my guess is that by that time, Nolan had pitched his version of Batman to them and they loved it. As we all know, Nolan is now the ‘savior’ of the Batman franchise. Let’s hope the third Bat flick is as good as the first two. Rumor has it, the third film might be called The Caped Crusader. I like it, but Nolan might end up naming it The Dark Knight Returns. He’s also in charge of rebooting Superman franchise, again.