Joel Schumacher’s Batman Forever from 1995 has a darker director’s cut, and Warner Bros came close to officially releasing it.
We’ve known since 2021 that a director’s cut of Batman Forever exists. There was quite a lot of excitement about the 1995 film getting a recut release given that the rumour mill suggested we’d see something substantially darker than the theatrical version released almost 30 years ago.
The mood was pretty optimistic that it would happen too. Joel Schumacher, the film’s director, had just passed away at the age of 80 and the feeling was that releasing his cut of the film would be an apt tribute. Zack Synder’s cut of Justice League had also been released a couple of months earlier.
A feeling of momentum began to build, and the expectation was that the cut would be released. It never happened, though, and despite us (and many other sites) writing and podcasting about it, the anticipation slowly bled away. Akiva Goldsman, the film’s writer, was at Comic-Con the other day and was asked about the cut by Collider. He revealed that it was close to being released and it was only a change at the top of Warner Bros that altered the plan.
Read more: Batman Forever | Just how ‘dark’ can the Schumacher cut be?
In his own words: “Yes, it does exist. There is a preview called Preview One. Most of the material that is available is put back together. There’s not a lot out there that folks haven’t seen that you couldn’t cobble [together]. I did talk to Warner [Bros]. This was one administration ago. My fantasy was to try and resurrect [Batman Forever] as a sort of celebration with Joel after he died. There’s some visual effects that need to be finished. There would be some music that would have to be re-scored or rewritten. The whole [budget] soup to nuts was about a million bucks.”
So what happened? According to Goldsman, “They were on the verge of doing it, and then Warner got sold again. There’s a-whole-nother DC…. Once the new DC world is moving forward, I will bat my eyes with everybody again and see if once more we can answer that.”
Given that 2022 saw the merger of Warner Bros with Discovery, it looks like the film was lost in the shuffle and the director’s cut of Batman Forever is another film that Warner Bros may hold onto and never let us see. Unless there’s another change in leadership at Warner Bros? Hopefully Goldsman has a real knack for batting his eyes.
There might yet (one day) be more to this story. We’ll let you know if we ever hear more.
