Film + TV

Courtney Love could have starred in a scrapped Batman film

by Dan MacRae

Joel Schumacher’s third Batman flick was doomed to never hit the big screen after the mess that was Batman & Robin. However, the director has now revealed that this no-go of a project could have featured a fascinating potential cast.

The Hollywood Reporter has a fantastic piece about the scrapped projects in the wilderness between Batman & Robin and Batman Begins that shares loads of eyebrow-arching details. Schumacher’s proposed third Caped Crusader film, known by the S&M-y title Batman Unchained, would have seen George Clooney and Chris O’Donnell returning as Batman and Robin to battle a formidable squadron of villains. Nic Cage would come aboard to play Scarecrow and Courtney Love was in early talks to play Harley Quinn.

“I think she had heard about the possibility of Harley Quinn being in the new Batman and was thinking she would be good for it,” shares screenwriter Mark Protosevich in an anecdote about a lunch meeting with the Hole frontwoman. “But we didn’t really talk about that. We talked about a lot of other things. It was certainly one of the better lunches I’ve ever had in my career in show business.”

According to the article, the studio pushed for a parade of cameos from villains that popped up earlier in the franchise. If everything went according to plan (it didn’t) the film may have featured Jack Nicholson, Danny DeVito, Michelle Pfeiffer, Tommy Lee Jones and Jim Carrey reprising their previous roles. If they could have wrangled Prince to do the soundtrack again, box office records would have been shattered.