Foreshadowed in the very last scene of Batman Begins, everyone knew about and keenly anticipated the impending arrival of the Joker in the Dark Knight. Buzz was already building prior the film's scheduled summer release date. The Joker was a tough character to play. Legendary. Larger-than-life. You either amplified the legend of the Joker's persona or you made a hash of it. Jack Nicholson's stellar turn in Batman was going to be even more difficult for any actor attempting to fill those shoes. And worse, with Nolan's gritty, grounded realism for his Batman films, how on Earth would a Joker be able to fit in without being too corny?
The casting of the uber-talented Heath Ledger was a good beginning. Audiences were already warmed-up to the duo of Christian Bale and Michael Caine (trio if you included Gary Oldman).
Perhaps, like in many films before, the Dark Knight's publicity received extra boost by the untimely death of Heath Ledger.
******
The first casualty of The Dark Knight was Katie Holmes. After marrying Tom Cruise in the previous Novemeber, Holmes had begun 2007 with new advisors and a seeming change of mind about the sequel. Rumours circulated that Tom Cruise objected to the love scenes she was to play.
Without even negotiating, Holmes withdraw from the project citing 'scheduling difficulties' and the committed instead to a comedy with Queen Latifah entitled Mad Money.
Disappointed, Nolan turned to his casting directors who recommended Maggie Gyllenhaal.
The character of Bruce Wayne may have been a billionaire by inheritance but Batman Begins achieved it in a matter of months, from accummulative box offices around the world.
Helped by good word-of-mouth and positive reviews, it stormed the box office to the tune of a USD120 million weekend, the largest ever, and by-passing Spiderman 2 record.
In retrospect, Nolan's decision to turn to the roots of Batman was not as crucial as his intention to keep the vision grounded in a dark, humanistic vision. A true epic, his cinematic style of hard cuts, compressed timelines and cross-cutting editing style kept people glued to their seats despite the two hour plus length.
For a while it threatened to surpass Titanic, but eventually petered out just past the billion mark, another USD800 million short of its target. At least Batman Begins would surpass Jim Cameron's magnum opus in one area by a wider margin: merchandising.
REMAKING A LEGEND: THE ORIGINS OF BATMAN BEGINS
It seems totally uncharacteristic to find the Batman franchise resurrected and filming in, of all places, Iceland. The cold was biting on the February morning, as hard and unforgiving as any place the cast and crew had been to. Worse, the shoot day was pushed forward 48 hours because a key location was literally disintegrating.
‘It’s now and never,’ barked producer Emma Thomas anxiously, to no one in particular. The crew almost didn’t hear it as they were setting up furiously. They did hear the eerie, hollow cracking sounds of the frozen lake where the very first shot was to take place. The ice was melting and the Leading man Christian Bale and Liam Neeson took a last-minute rehearsal duel under the watchful eye of Fight Arranger David Forman and director Chris Nolan. The latter nodded in approval. Ever gingerly, the crew walked the thin ice, with a massive blue-green glacier just beyond.
Just what was Batman’s alter ego doing in this location after all?
*****
After the fourth Batman film, Batman and Robin, ground to a halt in September, 1997, it seemed liked Hollywood had done almost irreparable damage to a great comic book icon. What started out as the fantasy-noir epic of Batman under Tim Burton had slowly degenerated into a cheesy farce over the years. Batman and Robin was the culmination of it, with a measly US230 million worldwide gross barely covering its US125 million production cost. Barely, because the massive global publicity campaign brought its own cost to bear on the studio, and the total grosses were barely going to cover its investment.
Grosses. Hollywood lives and dies by it. The cinema box office is watched by studio execs, stars and the media with more intensity than a tech stock IPO going live. After Batman Returns grossed less than its sequel (a mere US282 million compared to US411 million) Warner Bros felt the third installment should head back to family territory. Tim Burton met studios executives and felt dismayed. Having taken the two films into noir territory he couldn’t just make a U-turn. It wouldn’t be right, he said. Burton decided to pass on the project.
Joel Schumacher agreed and took on Batman Forever. It was one meant for children like his nephew who excitedly watched an early screening with the Hollywood veteran. True to expectations, the movie grossed US336 million worldwide and a fourth was promptly ordered. But greed made it go even further. Trouble was, Batman and Robin slapped on the cheese too much. It simply posed no entertainment proposition nor intellectual challenge for the masses of adults eager to see the film renew a DC comics legend in a suitably adult way. Worse than a bomb, it was seemingly a franchise-killer.
Warner Bros execs licked their wounds and focused on releasing The Matrix and Harry Potter films. However, one of the hits in the following years was Insomnia.
This noir-ish thriller was Nolan’s first major Hollywood film. In fact, the rise of Chris Nolan is synonymous with the reinvention of film noir at the turn of the new millennium. Understatedly gifted, almost reclusive, Nolan had burst out of obscurity with his ultra-low budget feature Following, before Memento cemented his talents and Warner Bros came a-calling. Now, post-Insomnia, Nolan was privy to its studio execs and their development plans.
It was 2002. As Nolan states: “The main goal was really to do something fresh and original. And that was coming straight from the studio. And if it wasn't, I wouldn't have gotten involved with the project because it's pretty rare to have an iconic figure that's owned and controlled by a studio that's asking you to do something different with it. That really was the mandate. For me, what that became was my desire to do something we hadn't seen before, a superhero story told in a realistic fashion.”
Nolan told the studio that he wanted to make The Dark Knight in a very grounded way, that gave a humanity to Bruce Wayne that audiences would connect with. There would be no gothic element nor would it be cartoon-like.
DEVELOPMENT GREENLIGHT
Screenwriter David Goyer got a call in mid 2002, from CAA, the agency representing Nolan. They wanted to set up a meeting to see if he’d consider working with Nolan on a new, as yet unnamed Batman movie.
Goyer was thrilled but was caught in a bind. He was scheduled to direct his first feature in six weeks time. Undeterred, Nolan pressed for a meeting where the two could talk more and suitable themes and treatments. Not a comic book fan, Nolan desperately wanted someone with the right background and understanding of American comic culture, someone who could combine that with Nolan’s own objective vision of a new dark knight.
The two would hang out at Nolan’s Los Angeles home, nailing out key aspects of the story treatment before heading down for lunch. “I remember Chris and I batting ideas around thinking there’s no way they’re going to let us do this. Not that we were breaking any great rules, but it just seemed like we were doing the sort of story that I certainly had always wanted to see. And DC and Warner Bros. were great. They just embraced it. It’s actually the best experience I’ve ever had working with a studio because they truly trusted us and just said, ‘You guys know what you’re doing. We’re going to let you run with it.’”
Well, I remember the very first discussion I had with Chris. We were talking about that but at that point it hadn’t even been decided that we were going to do an origin story yet. I mean, this was just the very first discussion but very quickly over the course of 10-15 minutes we decided we had to tell an origin story. And I felt very strongly that we should use characters that hadn’t been depicted in the films before. Fortunately, and I was familiar with the sort of rogues gallery of Batman’s foes, fortunately in the case of Scarecrow and Ra’s Al Ghul that they were two really great villains that hadn’t been used. After that, we were kind of scraping the bottom of the barrel, whether it was Killer Moth or some of these other crazy characters. They’d been played with in the animated shows, but I just happen to think Ra’s Al Ghul is unique as a “Batman” villain because his goals, you know, although they are certainly perverted somewhat, he’s more realistic as a character. And the Scarecrow is unique because it allowed the opportunity, I think, to depict a villain that was truly scary and frightening. And because Chris and I wanted to tell a story about fear and overcoming your fear, it just seemed like a no-brainer.
Secrecy was so paramount, that no physical scripts were sent to the studio executives. They had to attend a script reading at the Nolans’ home to hear the first draft. The reception was unanimously positive, even though some still voiced concern at the length. Nolan reiterated his promise of a 2 hour 20 minute length but with a level of compressed narrative and pacing that would make it breeze past audiences. He pointed out that almost all of the great films were considered ‘long’; Titanic was among the longest but still number one at the box office.
A summer production date was tentatively set and the mountain of paperwork began. Publicity-prevention ensured that all memos and printed scripts were circulated with the title …
US100 MILLION FINANCING
When a film of this scale reaches the fever pitch of anticipation, the financing will have no shortage of marketplace investors – distributors, sales agents, studio partners and other financing entities.
In this case, Warner Bros executives would participate in the budget financing but new exactly where they could go. It was literally around the corner. Leasing offices on their same studio lot was Legendary Pictures, headed by Thomas Tull. A former coin laundry exec and rising media moghul at Convex, Tull had a fascination for comic books and filmmaking. His rise into the Ivy League investment circles was backed by his steady track record. Tull finally formed Legendary Pictures in 2004 with the backing of ABRY Partners, AIG Direct Investments, Bank of America Capital Investors, Columbia Capital, Falcon Investment Advisors and M/C Venture Partners. Some US500 million of capital formed his war chest to focus on comic book adaptations.
With such powerful investors, Tullman was easily able to sign a 5 year, 25-picture deal (later extended to 40 over 7 years) to co-finance and co-produce feature films with Warner Bros.
Batman Begins was his first film. Tull, as a movie financier, would duly take a role of executive producer. However, he was no ordinary ‘hands-off’ one and was quick to take an interest in all scripts in development and consult with a director like Nolan.
NAILING THE FINAL SCRIPT
With Goyer’s tremendous input at treatment level and for the successful first draft, Nolan was able to finish the amended draft of the screenplay himself in record time – two weeks.
As they approached production, a minor scare appeared. "The script actually leaked on the Internet," sighs Goyer. "The studio. Was. Nervous! But it was met with almost unanimous praise by the fanboys. Their response was 'Wow! This is great! Warner's will never let Nolan make it!"
Goyer adds: “Frankly, I don’t know that I – as much as I love “Batman” – I don’t know that I would have been interested in writing it for anyone else. I think Chris is such a great filmmaker... the fact that Chris was going to do it and that Warner Bros. was actually going to let him do it, it was an amazing experience.”
Meanwhile, Warner Bros and Legendary inked their feature film deal for Batman Begins. Tull hired Larry Franco as Supervising Producer to Emma Thomas in her first big budget attempt with Chris. His experience would come in handy.
Particularly so when, deep in pre-production, Nolan realized that Iceland would stand in for his Bhutan-based vision of Bruce Wayne's search for his calling. It was already in late February and to film on a frozen lake meant they had to film at the location urgently. Like film-making always warrants, original plans were in disarray and new ones sought. Instead of filming previous scenes first at Shepparton Studios, Iceland was to come first.
*****
With a rushed, smaller crew and few frills to support them, Batman Begins officially started on 12th March, 2004 beside the Vatnajokull Glacier. The production kept the moniker Intimidation Game to ensure the veil of secrecy still wrapped itself around Warner Bros' biggest investment of the year. Everything from call-sheets to budgets to script revisions kept to the charade.
Shepperton was next. Crowley (a London native) had been busy flying back and forth from Iceland to the UK studios as the latter was where the Batcave scenes would be filmed. Impressively, 12 water pumps supplied tonnes of water that would fill the studio, complete with a waterfall and fully-controlled river. A major compressed-air catapult even allowed the half-tonne Batmobile to be launched from a ramp with precision. Only Shepperton was big enough to allow this. Coming from the -30 degree Celcius torture of Iceland, this was a welcome respite for the production crew.
Cardington was three times larger than Shepperton and officially became the world's largest film studio in April when production moved there. Much of Gotham City, including the ghetto-ish Narrows was re-created there in what Bale marvelled was a "city within a city". The 900ft long studio would be home for the set builders for 10 months while Batman Begins filmed elsewhere.
‘It’s now and never,’ barked producer Emma Thomas anxiously, to no one in particular. The crew almost didn’t hear it as they were setting up furiously. They did hear the eerie, hollow cracking sounds of the frozen lake where the very first shot was to take place. The ice was melting and the Leading man Christian Bale and Liam Neeson took a last-minute rehearsal duel under the watchful eye of Fight Arranger David Forman and director Chris Nolan. The latter nodded in approval. Ever gingerly, the crew walked the thin ice, with a massive blue-green glacier just beyond.
Just what was Batman’s alter ego doing in this location after all?
*****
After the fourth Batman film, Batman and Robin, ground to a halt in September, 1997, it seemed liked Hollywood had done almost irreparable damage to a great comic book icon. What started out as the fantasy-noir epic of Batman under Tim Burton had slowly degenerated into a cheesy farce over the years. Batman and Robin was the culmination of it, with a measly US230 million worldwide gross barely covering its US125 million production cost. Barely, because the massive global publicity campaign brought its own cost to bear on the studio, and the total grosses were barely going to cover its investment.
Grosses. Hollywood lives and dies by it. The cinema box office is watched by studio execs, stars and the media with more intensity than a tech stock IPO going live. After Batman Returns grossed less than its sequel (a mere US282 million compared to US411 million) Warner Bros felt the third installment should head back to family territory. Tim Burton met studios executives and felt dismayed. Having taken the two films into noir territory he couldn’t just make a U-turn. It wouldn’t be right, he said. Burton decided to pass on the project.
Joel Schumacher agreed and took on Batman Forever. It was one meant for children like his nephew who excitedly watched an early screening with the Hollywood veteran. True to expectations, the movie grossed US336 million worldwide and a fourth was promptly ordered. But greed made it go even further. Trouble was, Batman and Robin slapped on the cheese too much. It simply posed no entertainment proposition nor intellectual challenge for the masses of adults eager to see the film renew a DC comics legend in a suitably adult way. Worse than a bomb, it was seemingly a franchise-killer.
Warner Bros execs licked their wounds and focused on releasing The Matrix and Harry Potter films. However, one of the hits in the following years was Insomnia.
This noir-ish thriller was Nolan’s first major Hollywood film. In fact, the rise of Chris Nolan is synonymous with the reinvention of film noir at the turn of the new millennium. Understatedly gifted, almost reclusive, Nolan had burst out of obscurity with his ultra-low budget feature Following, before Memento cemented his talents and Warner Bros came a-calling. Now, post-Insomnia, Nolan was privy to its studio execs and their development plans.
It was 2002. As Nolan states: “The main goal was really to do something fresh and original. And that was coming straight from the studio. And if it wasn't, I wouldn't have gotten involved with the project because it's pretty rare to have an iconic figure that's owned and controlled by a studio that's asking you to do something different with it. That really was the mandate. For me, what that became was my desire to do something we hadn't seen before, a superhero story told in a realistic fashion.”
Nolan told the studio that he wanted to make The Dark Knight in a very grounded way, that gave a humanity to Bruce Wayne that audiences would connect with. There would be no gothic element nor would it be cartoon-like.
DEVELOPMENT GREENLIGHT
Screenwriter David Goyer got a call in mid 2002, from CAA, the agency representing Nolan. They wanted to set up a meeting to see if he’d consider working with Nolan on a new, as yet unnamed Batman movie.
Goyer was thrilled but was caught in a bind. He was scheduled to direct his first feature in six weeks time. Undeterred, Nolan pressed for a meeting where the two could talk more and suitable themes and treatments. Not a comic book fan, Nolan desperately wanted someone with the right background and understanding of American comic culture, someone who could combine that with Nolan’s own objective vision of a new dark knight.
The two would hang out at Nolan’s Los Angeles home, nailing out key aspects of the story treatment before heading down for lunch. “I remember Chris and I batting ideas around thinking there’s no way they’re going to let us do this. Not that we were breaking any great rules, but it just seemed like we were doing the sort of story that I certainly had always wanted to see. And DC and Warner Bros. were great. They just embraced it. It’s actually the best experience I’ve ever had working with a studio because they truly trusted us and just said, ‘You guys know what you’re doing. We’re going to let you run with it.’”
Well, I remember the very first discussion I had with Chris. We were talking about that but at that point it hadn’t even been decided that we were going to do an origin story yet. I mean, this was just the very first discussion but very quickly over the course of 10-15 minutes we decided we had to tell an origin story. And I felt very strongly that we should use characters that hadn’t been depicted in the films before. Fortunately, and I was familiar with the sort of rogues gallery of Batman’s foes, fortunately in the case of Scarecrow and Ra’s Al Ghul that they were two really great villains that hadn’t been used. After that, we were kind of scraping the bottom of the barrel, whether it was Killer Moth or some of these other crazy characters. They’d been played with in the animated shows, but I just happen to think Ra’s Al Ghul is unique as a “Batman” villain because his goals, you know, although they are certainly perverted somewhat, he’s more realistic as a character. And the Scarecrow is unique because it allowed the opportunity, I think, to depict a villain that was truly scary and frightening. And because Chris and I wanted to tell a story about fear and overcoming your fear, it just seemed like a no-brainer.
Secrecy was so paramount, that no physical scripts were sent to the studio executives. They had to attend a script reading at the Nolans’ home to hear the first draft. The reception was unanimously positive, even though some still voiced concern at the length. Nolan reiterated his promise of a 2 hour 20 minute length but with a level of compressed narrative and pacing that would make it breeze past audiences. He pointed out that almost all of the great films were considered ‘long’; Titanic was among the longest but still number one at the box office.
A summer production date was tentatively set and the mountain of paperwork began. Publicity-prevention ensured that all memos and printed scripts were circulated with the title …
US100 MILLION FINANCING
When a film of this scale reaches the fever pitch of anticipation, the financing will have no shortage of marketplace investors – distributors, sales agents, studio partners and other financing entities.
In this case, Warner Bros executives would participate in the budget financing but new exactly where they could go. It was literally around the corner. Leasing offices on their same studio lot was Legendary Pictures, headed by Thomas Tull. A former coin laundry exec and rising media moghul at Convex, Tull had a fascination for comic books and filmmaking. His rise into the Ivy League investment circles was backed by his steady track record. Tull finally formed Legendary Pictures in 2004 with the backing of ABRY Partners, AIG Direct Investments, Bank of America Capital Investors, Columbia Capital, Falcon Investment Advisors and M/C Venture Partners. Some US500 million of capital formed his war chest to focus on comic book adaptations.
With such powerful investors, Tullman was easily able to sign a 5 year, 25-picture deal (later extended to 40 over 7 years) to co-finance and co-produce feature films with Warner Bros.
Batman Begins was his first film. Tull, as a movie financier, would duly take a role of executive producer. However, he was no ordinary ‘hands-off’ one and was quick to take an interest in all scripts in development and consult with a director like Nolan.
NAILING THE FINAL SCRIPT
With Goyer’s tremendous input at treatment level and for the successful first draft, Nolan was able to finish the amended draft of the screenplay himself in record time – two weeks.
As they approached production, a minor scare appeared. "The script actually leaked on the Internet," sighs Goyer. "The studio. Was. Nervous! But it was met with almost unanimous praise by the fanboys. Their response was 'Wow! This is great! Warner's will never let Nolan make it!"
Goyer adds: “Frankly, I don’t know that I – as much as I love “Batman” – I don’t know that I would have been interested in writing it for anyone else. I think Chris is such a great filmmaker... the fact that Chris was going to do it and that Warner Bros. was actually going to let him do it, it was an amazing experience.”
Meanwhile, Warner Bros and Legendary inked their feature film deal for Batman Begins. Tull hired Larry Franco as Supervising Producer to Emma Thomas in her first big budget attempt with Chris. His experience would come in handy.
Particularly so when, deep in pre-production, Nolan realized that Iceland would stand in for his Bhutan-based vision of Bruce Wayne's search for his calling. It was already in late February and to film on a frozen lake meant they had to film at the location urgently. Like film-making always warrants, original plans were in disarray and new ones sought. Instead of filming previous scenes first at Shepparton Studios, Iceland was to come first.
*****
With a rushed, smaller crew and few frills to support them, Batman Begins officially started on 12th March, 2004 beside the Vatnajokull Glacier. The production kept the moniker Intimidation Game to ensure the veil of secrecy still wrapped itself around Warner Bros' biggest investment of the year. Everything from call-sheets to budgets to script revisions kept to the charade.
Shepperton was next. Crowley (a London native) had been busy flying back and forth from Iceland to the UK studios as the latter was where the Batcave scenes would be filmed. Impressively, 12 water pumps supplied tonnes of water that would fill the studio, complete with a waterfall and fully-controlled river. A major compressed-air catapult even allowed the half-tonne Batmobile to be launched from a ramp with precision. Only Shepperton was big enough to allow this. Coming from the -30 degree Celcius torture of Iceland, this was a welcome respite for the production crew.
Cardington was three times larger than Shepperton and officially became the world's largest film studio in April when production moved there. Much of Gotham City, including the ghetto-ish Narrows was re-created there in what Bale marvelled was a "city within a city". The 900ft long studio would be home for the set builders for 10 months while Batman Begins filmed elsewhere.
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