Somewhere out in the cosmos, there exists a parallel world—an Earth-Two if you will—in which Jack Nicholson was never The Joker. A reality without that iconic mirror-smashing scene or the sublime weirdness of the “Batdance.” This is a universe in which we are all still arguing about whether Heath Ledger was a better Joker than John Lithgow. (Yes, even in this weird world, the opinion of Jared Leto’s attempt in unanimous.) As Joe Dante revealed in a recent interview with Psychotronic Cinema, he was given the chance to direct a Batman film before Tim Burton ever was.
“Well, the Batman that I was going to do would have been completely different from what they ended up making,” Dante said, before explaining that the vision he and screenwriter Tom Mankiewicz (an uncredited writer on Gremlins) had for the film “was certainly darker than the TV version,” which was still what mainstream audiences associated with Batman. “It started with his parents being killed, and it was a revenge story. But it was very outlandish, had a lot of giant props in it. The Joker was a major character in it. I wanted to hire John Lithgow for that part because I had met him on The Twilight Zone movie.”