James Wan is about to make his leap into the world of the comic book movie with Aquaman and if past is prologue, the director will have his choice of blockbuster movies after this, especially if he's interested in continuing in the comic book movie genre. It turns out, that before being handed the seahorse reins of the Aquaman franchise, the director, like many others, had something of a dream of taking on Batman. However, the version of Batman he was interested in doing wasn't the traditional hero we're all familiar with. Wan says he wanted to do a more scary version of the character.
In the past like most people I loved the idea of directing Batman, but a horror version of Batman. That would be a potential fantasy of mine, but I feel like he's been done quite a fair bit. But, I do love the idea of doing an outright scary Batman. I feel like that'd be really cool.
It's probably not too surprising that the man responsible for the Conjuring horror franchise would be interested in making a scary Batman movie. It's one of the reasons that Wan was something of a surprising choice to direct Aquaman in the first place. The director has handled a straight action movie, quite well, with Furious 7, but other than that his work has been largely focused on horror movies.
It's also not too difficult to see Batman done as a more terrifying character. He hides in the shadows and jumps out and bad guys. They are certainly supposed to be terrified of him, so framing the movie in such a way that the audience was also supposed to be scared wouldn't necessarily be all that difficult.
Of course, one has to now wonder whether an idea like this one might actually be possible. The word on the street is that Aquaman is going to be a big hit for Warner Bros. and DC and if so James Wan will have some power that he'll be able to use on future projects. Perhaps the idea he tells Heroic Hollywood about is something that could potentially happen.
We've also seen that, while the DC movie universe is still moving forward, WB has no fear in making comic book movies that aren't connected to it. We're getting a new Joker movie with Joaquin Phoenix that has nothing to do with the DCEU, so why couldn't we also get a standalone Batman horror movie?
It probably is a long shot, but it's also an exciting idea. It would certainly put a new twist on a character that has seen so many different film adaptations that something fresh and unique wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. Especially since the fate of the current DC movie Batman is far from clear at this point.
Aquaman will be in theaters December 21.
