Frank Miller Explains Why Darren Aronofsky’s BATMAN: YEAR ONE Film Never Happened

Back in 2000, Warner Bros. was developing a Batman reboot based loosely on the Batman: Year One graphic novel. Darren Aronofsky was set to direct, while the comic’s writer, Frank Miller, penned the script. However, the studio ended up passing on the project. The script was heavily criticized by fans for being a very unfaithful adaptation of the source material. More info can be found here.

But why didn’t Batman: Year One happen? In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Frank Miller explains that, essentially, the film was “too dark” in the eyes of WB. Aronofsky’s vision of Batman was even darker than Miller’s – and Miller is the author of The Dark Knight Returns, one of the darkest Batman stories ever.

Miller says, “It was the first time I worked on a Batman project with somebody whose vision of Batman was darker than mine. My Batman was too nice for him. We would argue about it, and I’d say, ‘Batman wouldn’t do that, he wouldn’t torture anybody,’ and so on. We hashed out a screenplay, and we were wonderfully compensated, but then Warner Bros. read it and said, ‘We don’t want to make this movie.’ The executive wanted to do a Batman he could take his kids to. And this wasn’t that. It didn’t have the toys in it. The Batmobile was just a tricked-out car. And Batman turned his back on his fortune to live a street life so he could know what people were going through. He built his own Batcave in an abandoned part of the subway. And he created Batman out of whole cloth to fight crime and a corrupt police force.” When asked about possibly adapting the story into graphic novel form, Miller replies, “Maybe I will.”

Do you wish that Aronofsky’s Batman: Year One had happened? For the rest of THR’s interview with Miller, where he explains why he won’t see Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and discusses his political influences on Batman, click the link above.