“Sin City” and “300” creator Frank Miller reinvented Batman and the entire comics industry in the 1980s with his seminal work “The Dark Knight Returns,” a comic that has had a big influence on the Batman films – most notably the current incarnation in the DCEU films with Ben Affleck in the role.
Appearing at Lucca Comics & Games this week in Europe, Miller spoke with Variety who asked him if he had his way, where would he take the “Batman” movie franchise today. His response:
“My dream would be to make it much smaller. To lose the toys and to focus more on the mission, and to use the city a great deal more. Because he’s got a loving relationship with the city he’s protecting. And unlike Superman his connection to crime is intimate; it has been ever since his parents were murdered. And he defeats criminals with his hands. So it would be a different take. But it will never be in my hands, because it would not be a good place to make toys from. There wouldn’t be a line of toys.”
At one time Miller was attached to the Darren Aronofsky-directed film adaptation of his own “Batman: Year One” comic, a version Warner Bros. Pictures opted not to make. Was that smaller scale approach one they intended to use in the film?
“That screenplay was based on my book ‘Batman: Year One,’ and yeah it was much more down to earth. In it a fair amount of time is spent before he became Batman, and when he went out and fought crime he really screwed it up a bunch of times before he got it right. So it was 90-minute origins story.”
In the same interview Miller says he’s heard rumors of another “300” sequel, but he’s not a part of that and as of right now has “nothing in progress” in terms of film projects.
