Years after he cemented himself as one of the best directors out there, Sam Raimi made two of the best superhero movies of all time, Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2. Years later, he found himself back in that world for a not-as-great but certainly enjoyable sequel, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Simply put, the man knows his way around a cape and a cowl. And yet, even though he’s already made three films with comic book heroes, there’s at least one major one he’d still love to tackle.
“I love Batman,” Raimi told Movieweb. “I tried to make a Batman film. I couldn’t get the rights.”
Can you imagine a Sam Raimi Batman movie? The kinetic action, the vibrant camera, the pure Bat-shit (pun intended) insanity?
In the same interview, Raimi went on to discuss some other characters he would love to tackle. “I love the Shadow,” Raimi continued. “I also couldn’t get the rights to that one. But, um, Superman’s always been one of my favorites. Yeah, there’s a tremendous amount of DC characters that I love, and it would just take the writers to come up with an original story based on their character, that’s true to the character and part of their real universe, not something that disappoints the fans, but something that’s based on the fans’ love of the character and brings out the best moment of those characters and their proper conflicts, or the right challenges for the right hero. If it was a story that had a real journey for that particular individual. Then I’d love to make the movie.”
Raimi also talked about his desire to make more superhero movies in a recent Reddit AMA. When a fan asked, “What would be your biggest criticism of superhero movies made today?” Raimi replied, “That they don’t offer me more of them!”
Back to Batman, though. It’s a little confusing when Raimi says he couldn’t get the rights. Clearly, the rights are with DC, which is controlled by Warner Bros. “Couldn’t” feels like the wrong word. He probably means Warner Bros. and DC, at whatever time this was, weren’t interested in making a Batman movie.
If you look at the history of Batman movies juxtaposed with Raimi’s career, it just feels like the timing was never right. He could have approached Warner Bros. before 1989, but Raimi was still a relative newcomer, so you get that not working out. Tim Burton got the job. It could’ve also happened between 1997 and 2005, before Christopher Nolan’s films, but that’s when Raimi was primarily busy with Spider-Man movies. Finally, he could’ve looked into it sometime between 2012 and 2016 when Zack Snyder took over. But, that’s kind of right in the middle of Raimi being in director jail after the disaster that was Oz: The Great and Powerful. At all other times, Batman was spoken for.
So, to us, Sam Raimi not making a Batman movie feels less like he couldn’t get the rights and more like the rights weren’t in play at those times. But never say never. Maybe if Andy Muschietti can’t do The Brave and the Bold, current DC Studios president James Gunn has the perfect person on speed dial.
Raimi’s next movie, Send Help, is in theaters January 30.
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