It's no secret that 1997's Batman & Robin was a colossal failure both theatrically and critically and it pretty much marked the end of the '90s Batman film franchise until Christopher Nolan revived it several years later. The film's flop also resulted in George Clooney being hailed by many as the worst live-action version of the caped crusader which says a lot given the fact that Adam West's campy iteration of the character exists.
One would think that Clooney feels some sort of resentment when thinking about his involvement in the film and while that may be true to some extent, the Hollywood icon apparently considers Batman & Robin his ticket to superstardom. Appearing on BAFTA's Life in Pictures, Clooney said that he credits his Hollywood fame to the project. "It had been a year and I'd gotten killed for doing Batman & Robin. I got Batman & Robin and I understood for the first time, because quite honestly when I got Batman & Robin, I was just an actor getting an acting job. And I was excited to play Batman. What I realized after that was that I was going to be held responsible for the movie itself, not just for my performance or what I was doing. And so I knew that I needed to focus on better scripts. The script was the most important thing. You can't make a good film out of a bad script. It's impossible."
He added: "We both needed this to be a success and it was. It's funny, people look at it now and think it was a hit. It didn't make a dime, lost money. They tried to release it in the summer and it was a bad release strategy. It was a critical darling and everybody loved it and it changed my career from that point on I was going to be allowed to make movies and I wasn't before that. It was all up in the air whether I was allowed to move from TV to film."
Thankfully, the actor was able to turn things around for his career and became one of Hollywood's biggest stars. I gotta say though, I've always wanted to see him get another shot at playing Batman just so he'll get the redemption story he deserves. Obviously, that's not on Clooney's mind but it's a missed opportunity on Warner Bros' part not casting him in the DCEU now that they're set to explore the multiverse.
Speaking of Batman and the multiverse, The Flash is slated for release in 2022.
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