Batman Begins revitalized a franchise after several botched attempts to reinvent Batman.

Joel Schumachers bat nipples momentarily killed the Batman film franchise.

Its how Ill be remembered.

From a commercial standpoint, the numbers told a different story.

With a big opening weekend and strong merchandise sales, the film at least warranted talk of aBatman 5.

How did we get here?

How did it all come to this?

Opening line ofBruce Wayne, a proposed television pilot from the early 2000s.

After the success ofSpider-Man, they felt they ought to get their big guys off the bench.

The quick fix was to reboot both Batman and Superman with one film.

InBatman vs. Superman: Asylum, Bruce Waynes Batman days are long behind him.

Warner Bros. was simultaneouslydeveloping a Superman solo film,Superman: Flyby, with a script by J.J. Abrams.

WhileFlybyended up winning the development race and got well into pre-production, that never materialized, either.

Around the same time, another reboot without rebooting project focused on bringingthe popularBatman Beyondanimated seriesto the big screen.

Co-creatorsPaul Diniand Alan Burnett penned a live-action version set to take place nearly 40 years in the future.

But adaptingYear Oneproved difficult.

Then there was theJoss Whedon versionofYear Onethat introduced a new villain outside of the Batman canon.

And Bruce is like, I stopped them.

I can stop them.

That was the moment for me.

When he goes Oh, wait a minute; I can actually do something about this.

My pitch wasDeath WishorThe French Connectionmeets Batman.

The Aronofsky/Miller draft had aspirations of creating a world not all that different from what became Nolans Batman universe.

This was during the same time AronofskysYear Onescript was making the rounds.

Eventually Warner Bros. features won out, and the search for the right Batman big-screen reboot continued.

McCanliesBruce Wayneproject faded, but not before spawning the WBsSmallville.

Smallvillestarted out as a backdoor pilot in theBruce Waynebible, McCanlies said in aninterview.

It was actually doing an episode called Smallville where a young Clark Kent comes to Gotham City.

Its like a newspaper convention and Bruce tries to get rid of him and lose him and he cant.

Everywhere he turns, Clarks right there.

The idea was always to do aSmallvillepilot.

And they said, Thats exactly what we want to do.

Funny enough, theSupermanconnection would rear its head one more time.

Were celebrating the anniversary ofBatman Beginsbecause, and we cant put it in simpler terms, its a goodmovie.

Dawn came for the Dark Knight, and it was well worth the wait.

you’re able to find Chris Longo in the Bat Cave, or onTwitter.