There are plenty of conversations about Joel Schumacher’s Batman Forever these days. From the reappraisal of Schumacher’s career since his passing or Kevin Smith hyping up the long-rumored 107-minute cut of the film, Batman Forever is on fans’ lips these days. This brought Akiva Goldsman back into the conversation as the film producer was recently asked about the project.
The producer looks back at the film in a recent interview with The Playlist. Goldsman was there for the whole ride, even back when Robin Williams was once attached to play The Riddler.
He recalls, “When I came in [to Batman Forever], no one had been cast yet, and it was still going to be Michael [Keaton]… I think that Val [Kilmer] wasn’t cast or just was, and Robin Williams was still attached.”
“I remember sort of this extraordinary day where Joel [Schumacher] sent me to San Francisco, and I spent the day in Robin’s kitchen and him just talking about the Riddler,” he adds. “And he was like, genius is not the right word. It was as if he like he had opened up his head and the universe would just talk into it. It was so beautiful and so kind.”
As the film evolved, Jim Carrey would step into the role, playing opposite Kilmer’s Batman and Tommy Lee Jones’s Two-Face. Batman Forever would go on to gross $336.6 million worldwide and became the sixth-highest-grossing film of 1995.
The reason we didn’t see Robin Williams stay on the project? Goldsman says: “Ultimately, he and Joel didn’t see eye to eye.” Goldsman still stands behind the film, even if he didn’t agree with every choice.
He notes, “Even though Tim’s Batman and Batman Returns, I think they were truer to the source or at least a version of the source – It just scared everybody. So they went to Joel because Joel sort of thought of Batman as the [60’s] show. It was kind of colorful and sort of big and sort of hyper-real. And I think [Batman] Forever kind of ended up walking a tightrope well enough.”
News has popped up as of late that Joel Schumacher’s Batman Forever extendedcut does exist, with filmmaker Kevin Smith having screened the workprint version at Smodcastle Cinemas this past weekend. There’s no word if DC Studios will ever #ReleaseTheSchumacherCut.
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