During the Producers on Producing Panel at San Diego Comic-Con 2024 (via Collider), screenwriter Akiva Goldsman discussed the current status of the legendary, long-suppressed “Schumacher Cut” of Batman Forever. That’s right: the one with the giant bat.
“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.”
So what exactly is in this Schumacher cut? During an episode of his Fatman Beyond podcast last year, Kevin Smith revealed he’d seen the aforementioned two and-a-half hour “Preview One” cut, dimly hailing it as “utterly watchable.” Underwhelmingly, scenes absent from the finished film were said to include Bruce Wayne suffering from temporary amnesia, a different resolution to the film’s mysterious “red book” plot thread, and a cameo from Jon Favreau as a financial consultant to Wayne Enterprises. More intriguingly, the director’s cut was also said to feature more of Tommy Lee Jones’ controversial portrayal of Two-Face, including an extended scene of the character’s disfigurement and his initial escape from Arkham Asylum.
Overall, Schumacher’s original cut felt much darker than what reached theaters–a sentiment Goldsman echoed on stage: “It was darker. Bruce was haunted by his past. He felt guilt. It’s all the stuff you read. None of that is mysterious. It was a more modern interpretation of the narrative, and what’s not dissimilar to those [stories] that we sort of caught up with now. I’ve seen it. It was put back together.”
Goldsman additionally revealed Warner Bros. would still need to sink “about a million bucks” into the Schumacher Cut’s restoration before its finally ready for ready for public consumption–a project the studio was ready to undertake before falling under new management. In his own words, “there’s some visual effects that need to be finished. There would be some music that would have to be if not re-scored or rewritten. The whole soup to nuts was about a million bucks. 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.”
Though the price tag may seem steep, a Bruce Wayne-esque $1,000,000 donation from Warner Bros’. admittedly deep pockets may be worth it to see the totality of Val Kilmer’s In the Mouth of Madness-inspired interplay with a giant, humanoid bat. Given the film’s vintage, there may even be a way to make it tax deductible. We know they like that over there.
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