Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice was pretty dark. Like Batman and Superman trying to kill each other dark. Like Ben Affleck screaming about a woman named Martha dark. It was dark!

But that ain’t nothing compared to the Batman v Superman movie we almost got many years before, according to its writer. That would be Akiva Goldsman, the scripter of such bleak, gritty films as Batman & Robin and The Dark Tower (and the Oscar-winning writer of A Beautiful Mind). Goldsman says he was contracted to write a Batman vs Superman film in the early 2000s for a totally different cast and filmmaker than the one we got. This movie would have been reeeeeally dark.

Here, via Collider, is how he described it:

I wrote on […] this version of Batman v Superman [around 2001or 2002]— when Colin Farrell was cast as Batman and Jude Law was cast as Superman and Wolfgang Petersen was directing —we were in prep and it was the darkest thing you’ve ever seen. It started with Alfred’s funeral and Bruce has fallen in love and renounced being Batman, the Joker kills his wife, and then you discover it was all a lie. Just that the love itself was constructed by the Joker to break [Bruce]. It was a time where you would be able to get these sort of stories together in script form but they couldn’t quite land in the world.

Jude Law would be an awesome Superman; Colin Farrell I’m less sure of as Batman — but we’ll at least see him in a Batman movie when Matt Reeves’ The Batman hits theaters in 2021; Farrell will play the Penguin. As for Goldsman’s story, it does sound mighty dark. But at a certain point, it's like, how much more dark could this be? And the answer is none. None more dark.”

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