Darren Aronofsky’s “Batman” movie canceled because he wanted to cast Joaquin Phoenix

The outbreak of COVID-19 has halted production for Matt Reeves’s The Batman. (Image Courtesy: New Music Express).

In an interview with Empire, Darren Aronofsky said Warner Bros. dismissed him from directing a Batman film in the early 2000s because he would have cast Joaquin Phoenix as Bruce Wayne whereas the studio wanted Freddie Prinze, Junior, according to New Music Express. Christopher Nolan ended up being hired to reboot the DC Comics franchise, while Phoenix would later go on to play the Caped Crusader’s archnemesis in Todd Phillips’s Joker (2019). Meanwhile, Matt Reeves’s The Batman (2021), starring Robert Pattinson, is currently in the works, with a release date scheduled for next summer (unless impacted by the coronavirus pandemic).

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History-making box office projections for Todd Phillips’s “Joker” (2019)

With critics raving about Todd Phillips’s Joker (2019) en masse at the 2019 Venice Film Festival, long-range box office projections for the film have skyrocketed, according to Comic Book Resources. If its forecasts prove accurate, then the movie will rake in the fourth-highest opening of all time for an R-rated release, behind Tim Miller’s Deadpool (2016), David Leitch’s Deadpool 2 (2018), and Andy Muschietti’s It (2017). As for the DCEU, it would outpace Zack Snyder’s Justice League (2017) and match Patty Jenkins’s Wonder Woman (2017), and even if Joker performs at the lower end of its estimates, it will still surpass Ruben Fleischer’s Venom (2018) as the top-grossing October opener ever.

Inside New Jersey’s filmmaking renaissance

After the New Jersey Legislature approved tax credits for film and television production and Governor Phil Murphy signed it into law in July 2018, industry revenue could double and local businesses could expect hundreds of millions of dollars, according to the Asbury Park Press. Todd Phillips’s Batman flick, Joker (2019), Alan Taylor’s prequel to HBO’s The Sopranos (1999-2007), The Many Saints of Newark (2020), and Steven Spielberg’s remake of the classic musical, West Side Story (2020), are all shooting in the state. Former Governor Chris Christie, in an effort to curb the budget, suspended the film and TV program in 2010 and allowed it to expire in 2015, blocking the 2009 incentive for MTV’s Jersey Shore (2009-2012).