“I didn’t do a good job. George [Clooney] did. Chris [O’Donnell] did. Uma [Thurman] is brilliant in it. Arnold [Schwarzenegger] was Arnold,” Joel Schumacher recently said about "Batman & Robin." Indeed, the poor box office and critical reception for his second crack at the "Batman" franchise, following "Batman Forever," forced Warner Bros. to start over, and they scrapped plans for proposed third film, "Batman Triumphant." But now, Schumacher is trying to get a second chance to make a first impression.
According to Bleeding Cool, Scumacher is writing a 12-issue "Batman" run that lays out his "original vision" for the three movies, across one story, with Dustin Nguyen creating the art. If this pans out, you gotta admire the guy for trying to get it right. He certainly already knows how to do it wrong, so it can only go up from here. And it will be interesting to see what could’ve been "Batman Triumphant, which had a story that featured (via Wikipedia) "the Scarecrow as the main villain and the Joker would return as a hallucination in Batman’s mind caused by the Scarecrow’s fear toxin. Harley Quinn appeared as a supporting character, written as the Joker’s daughter trying to kill Batman to avenge her father’s death." That sounds like…a lot of characters…if not necessarily a good story.
So, can Schumacher prove that he had the vision, but maybe perhaps not the execution at the time? He’s got a lot to prove, and if this pans out, it’ll be interesting to see if his ideas are better on paper than they were on the big screen.