Mother! Director Darren Aronofsky Says DCEU's Joker Origin Movie Sounds Like His Early Batman Pitch

Director Darren Aronofsky is currently working on the promotion of his movie, mother!, but he's also heard about the rumors that the DCEU is working on some anthology movies, and one of them is a Joker origin movie that could possibly star Lenoardo DiCaprio. As it turns out, he thinks that the Joker origin actually sounds very similar to his pitch for Batman: Year One.

During an interview with First Showing, Aronofsky explains:

"You know what, I think it's finally... I think we were basically, whatever it is, fifteen years too early. Because I hear the way they're talking about the Joker movie and that's exactly – that was my pitch."

I was like: we're going to shoot in East Detroit and East New York. We're not building Gotham. The Batmobile – I wanted to be a Lincoln Continental with two bus engines in it... With two bus engines, all duct taped together. It was the duct tape MacGyver Batman."

This version of Batman was a collaboration with Frank Miller, and it would have had Bruce Wayne be a homeless orphan who was taken in by Big Al (Alfred), and fought crime in a ski mask, cape, and brass knuckles. It was basically Taxi Driver but with Travis Bickle dressing up as a psychotic bat-person.

You can read the script here.

Aronofsky has also pointed out that Zack Snyder's BvS also seemed to take an idea from his film, and that was Batman putting his brand on criminals.

"Some of my ideas got out there through other films. Like the ring with "BW", Bruce Wayne's ring making the scar was our idea and I think that was in Zack [Snyder's] or something. Which is fine, you write these ideas and they get out. "

We were all about reinventing it and trying to make it more Taxi Driver visceral. That was the whole pitch. But the toy people were like, 'Oh it can't be a Lincoln Continental, you have to make a Batmobile.'"

It sounds like Aronofsky's take was going to be pretty dark, and I think it would have been too artsy to try on a film franchise as big as Batman. I guess it could work as a comic or an animated movie, but a big budget movie would have been pretty ballsy at the time.

See Also: Ben Affleck's Original Script For The Batman Was Inspired By David Fincher's The Game