According to Empire, when prepping the forthcoming Batman V. Superman: Dawn Of Justice, director Zack Snyder paid a visit to Christopher Nolan—director of the acclaimed Dark Knight trilogy and executive producer of Snyder’s Man Of Steel—and asked for Nolan’s blessing to use Batman in the new movie. And by “use,” we mean make the character an antagonist for a large part of the story, and then have Bats smacked around a bunch while Superman figures out creative ways not to kill him.
After what Snyder describes as a period of “silence” that undoubtedly would have been improved with a thudering Hans Zimmer score, Nolan told Snyder, “Well, we don’t own these characters. When you’re done making Batman movies, someone else will.” That doesn’t exactly sound like a ringing endorsement, but it was enough for Snyder to skip back to writer David Goyer and start thinking of cool ways that Batman could not die in a fight against Superman. “Stop saying ‘kryptonite’!” he probably yelled at Goyer. “There’s got to be another way! What about a super-strong suit?” Goyer likely responded, “He’s fighting Superman, the strongest guy on Earth. No one’s going to buy that.”
It’ll be interesting to learn Nolan’s reaction to the finished film, which—to the delight of some fans—seems to embrace comic-book action to a far greater extent than Nolan’s more grounded take on the mythos. Our prediction is something along the lines of, “I think the fans are going to love it. It’s very much the kind of movie they’ve been looking for.”