While David S. Goyer has had a long career in the film and TV industry, there will be many who know him best for his comic book film work. Particularly, he’s the man who wrote “Batman Begins” and “The Dark Knight,” two films that many consider to be the at the top of the comic book film mountain. But according to a new interview, Goyer initially turned down the opportunity to work on Christopher Nolan’s “Batman” reboot.
During an interview on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, where he is promoting Season 2 of “Foundation,” David Goyer was asked about his involvement in the ‘Batman’ franchise under director Christopher Nolan. Goyer recalled at the beginning of the conversation that when he first met with Nolan, before “Batman Begins,” the filmmaker was interested in exploring a “naturalistic take,” which he said was the “exact opposite” of the Joel Schumacher films. He called Nolan’s take on the character “revolutionary at the time.”
Insanely enough, Goyer said he turned down Nolan’s offer to co-write “Batman Begins” with him at first. In their initial meeting, Goyer said he pitched a bunch of ideas, but then said, “’I don’t wanna do it,’ which seems amazing in hindsight,” he admitted. The screenwriter explained the main reason he was turning down the offer at the time was because he thought the film would never get made and they would waste a lot of their time.
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“I didn’t think it would get made, I had three or four friends that had written ‘Batman’ scripts that hadn’t been made,” he said, noting that Boaz Yakin wrote “Batman Beyond,” Andrew Kevin Walker had written “Batman & Superman” and Mark Protosevich had written “Batman Triumphant.”
The rumor was that Jake Gyllenhaal was Goyer’s first pick for Batman, and the writer confirmed this story to be true.
“Yeah,” he said, also acknowledging that Gyllenhaal screen-tested and there’s probably footage of him in the Batman suit somewhere. “Initially, Chris was not Chris Nolan yet, and so, in the early days, it was Chris, Emma [his producer and wife], Nathan Crowley, a production designer who was next to us while we were writing. And we would chat about all sorts of things and there were a number of people that screen-tested and I had advocated for Gyllenhaal. I mean, Gyllenhaal’s amazing, Christian Bale is amazing, who knows what [could have been].”
Two other interesting tidbits. Happy Sad Confused said there was a rumor that Daniel Day-Lewis was contacted for both “Man of Steel” and “Batman Begins” and to the best of Goyer’s recollection, he wasn’t (though he allows, “he may have been”).
Meanwhile, there were a couple of different candidates for the running for Ra’s al Ghul, and Goyer said he strongly suggested Liam Neeson to Nolan. Nolan was sort of surprised and asked why and Goyer explained that some of the other picks were too close to Bale’s age and more contemporaries, whereas in the comics, Ra’s al Ghul was always more of a “surrogate father figure” and the writer thought they should use that dynamic.
“We’re telling a paternal story about the shadow of his father,” he said. “With all the Batman Rogue’s Gallery characters, [Ra’s] had a paternal function, he was like a shadow father, so I thought we had to lean in that direction. Now, I have no idea if I convinced Chris or not, other people could have said the same thing, but we talked a lot about these various elements.”
You can see the full interview with Goyer below: