Ben Affleck officially dropped out of playing Batman and directing the next standalone earlier this year, leaving behind the DC Cinematic Universe as a whole. Since then Robert Pattinson has been cast as Bruce Wayne and his vigilante alter ego, and Matt Reeves has been tapped to direct in Aflleck's place. The Batman will arrive in theaters in June 2021, but it'll likely be a very different movie than what Affleck originally had in mind.
Cinematographer Robert Richardson revealed during a conversation on the Happy Sad Confused podcast that he was tapped to shoot Affleck's ill-fated solo Batman film, and he also let slip some details on what the story of the movie would have entailed. "Well, he was going more into the insanity aspects. So I think you would’ve seen something a little darker than what we’ve seen in the past and more into the individual, who was inside Batman – what element may be sane and what element may actually not be sane," Richardson said.
The Affleck-directed Batman movie that we never got was reportedly going to take us inside Arkham Asylum, according to Richardson. "So he was entering into a little more of the Arkham, as you know, he’s going into where you keep everyone who was bad... it was very fascinating to go to the darker side of Batman," he added.
For fans of the countless Batman comics and even some more recent video games, Arkham Asylum is a big deal. Gotham City's psychiatric hospital is a famed institution for the criminally insane, housing a real rogues gallery of iconic villains including the Joker, Two-Face, and the Scarecrow among many others. Unfortunately, Batman fans will have to wait and see if Reeves' film will send R-Batz to Arkham.
