Zack Snyder had an idea for a Joker and Batman movie that explored the death of Robin that 'probably won't be'
- "Justice League" director Zack Snyder said he had an idea for a future Batman and Joker project.
- Snyder told Vanity Fair it would have explored the death of Robin, teased in "Batman v Superman."
- Batman and Joker will get a moment together in HBO Max's new cut of "Justice League."
Zack Snyder had plans for a future Batman movie that would have explored his complex relationship with the Joker.
But we'll likely never see it.
"I'd always wanted to explore the death of Robin," Snyder told Vanity Fair in an interview while discussing his upcoming four-hour cut of "Justice League" on HBO Max.
"If there ever was going to be a next movie, which, of course, there probably won't be, I wanted to do a thing where in flashbacks we learn how Robin died, how Joker killed him and burned down Wayne Manor, and that whole thing that happened between he and Bruce," said Snyder.
Snyder had laid those hints in his 2016 film, "Batman v Superman," in which a suit belonging to the Caped Crusader's sidekick was presumably graffitied by Batman's nemesis.
Bat fans instantly recognized the reference to one of the most famous Batman comics, 1988's "A Death in the Family," in which the Joker kidnaps and then brutally murders Robin with a crowbar.
At the time, DC asked fans to weigh in on whether or not Jason Todd, the second incarnation of Robin, would live or die.
Snyder's film idea sounds a bit different, though, because of the torching of Wayne Manor.
While Snyder likely won't get to bring an adaptation of that gritty story line to the big screen - DC recently did an interactive, animated take on it last year - he is getting to bring his full vision of "Justice League" to life after stepping down from directing the movie in 2017.
The "Snyder Cut," as fans have come to call it, will have a scene with Ben Affleck's Batman and Jared Leto's Joker (the one seen in "Suicide Squad") interacting, sort of.
According to Snyder, Batman will see the Joker during a "psychic vision" of the future, which will show an apocalyptic nightmare scenario if he and the Justice League failed to save the world. Wayne previously saw remnants of a similar scene in "BvS."
This time around, Leto's Joker will take Batman through this nightmarish future.
"The cool thing about the scene is that it's Joker talking directly to Batman about Batman," Snyder said. "It's Joker analyzing Batman about who he is and what he is. That's the thing I also felt like fans deserved from the DC Universe."
Not a part of the original "Justice League" plan, fans will see Leto's Joker with quite a different look.
His hair is longer and mangled, evoking the Heath Ledger-era Clown Prince of Crime, and the heavily criticized face tattoos seem removed or covered in make-up (Snyder didn't confirm which may be the case).
For Snyder, if he couldn't do another film with Bats and the Joker, at least he could deliver a scene between Affleck and Leto's versions of the characters for fans, something he felt they deserved.
"It seemed uncool to me that we would make it all the way through this incarnation of Batman and Joker without seeing them come together," he said.
Fans will see the two together when Snyder's "Justice League" debuts on HBO Max on March 18.