Screenwriter Akiva Goldsman spoke with Collider about an abandoned Batman Vs. Superman movie, which would’ve featured Jude Law as Superman facing off against Colin Farrell as Batman.

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The film would’ve been released in the early 2000s and directed by Wolfgang Petersen.

“We were in prep and it was the darkest thing you’ve ever seen,” Goldsman says. “It started with Alfred’s funeral and Bruce has fallen in love and renounced being Batman, the Joker kills his wife, and then you discover it was all a lie. Just that the love itself was constructed by the Joker to break [Bruce]. It was a time where you would be able to get these sort of stories together in script form but they couldn’t quite land in the world. Somehow, the expectations of the object — whether they be audience or corporate or directorial — it wasn’t landing quite in the way I think we imagined when we put them on the page.”

A similarly premised film, Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice, was released in 2016  to mixed reviews and was directed by Zach Snyder.

Colin Ferrell is set to make his DC Comics debut, appearing as Penguin in the upcoming Matt Reeves Batman film.

[Via]