
Whenever Batman movies are discussed, 1995's "Batman Forever" often gets overlooked. For whatever reason, we don't like to talk too much about this star-studded blockbuster that made $336 million ($70 million more than the previous installment), contained groundbreaking CGI in the form of the first-ever digital stunt double, and successfully kept the Batman franchise afloat after Tim Burton's "weird experiment," "Batman Returns," went a little too dark for mainstream audiences. But we should.
I remember
when "Batman Forever" debuted, and it was a big deal. The movie featured a new Batman/Bruce Wayne in the form of Val Kilmer, which, for anyone who'd grown up with Michael Keaton as their Batman, was a major change. Kilmer's Dark Knight arrived with an array of updated Bat-gadgets, too, including an undeniably cool Batmobile with an H.R. Geiger-influenced design. Tim Burton, who'd directed the first two films in the saga, was replaced with Joel Schumacher, who was tasked with making Batman accessible to wider audiences again. Heck, this was the first Batman movie (not counting the 1960s film) to feature Robin. All of this made "Forever" feel like a big moment in Batman's pop culture journey, and yet the movie has somehow been overshadowed by Schumacher's follow-up, the dismal "Batman & Robin."
In the years since "Forever" debuted, the film has been largely lumped in with its sequel, written off as a gaudy toy commercial that marked the beginning of the end for the Batman saga as it existed in the '90s. But that's doing Schumacher's first Bat-flick a disservice. There's no doubt the film was a more commercial effort than "Returns," but even if you didn't care for the movie due to its more mainstream sensibility, you can't necessarily fault Schumacher (who passed away in 2020) entirely for that aspect. That's because the director actually intended the film to be a much darker affair. In fact, there exists enough deleted scenes and general unreleased material from "Forever" that a relatively small group of fans have long been clamoring for what's become known as "The Schumacher Cut." I say "relatively" because, compared to the hordes of Zack Snyder fans who helped bring "Zack Snyder's Justice League" to fruition via a protracted online campaign, the "Release the Schumacher Cut" crowd is miniscule. But it's a passionate group, and for a while it seemed like they were making some progress in convincing Warner Bros. to release Schumacher's original, darker version of "Forever." For now, however, that cut remains in the Warner vaults and might never see the light of day.
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Fans Have Long Been Asking For The Schumacher Cut

It's now been 30 years since "Batman Forever" was released, and in that time, there have been multiple fan-made versions of the elusive "Schumacher Cut," including a "30th Anniversary Edition" from YouTuber and editor jordanjabroni, which is about as close as we've gotten to a full version of Joel Schumacher's original vision. There was also a workprint of the director's original, longer cut of the film that was screened by Kevin Smith in 2023. But we've yet to see the definitive original director's cut of "Batman Forever" get an official release — despite some prominent individuals jumping aboard the "Release the Schumacher cut" train.
Akiva Goldsman is one of them. The writer (who knew that "Batman & Robin" was doomed from the outset) was brought in to overhaul the "Forever" script back in the mid-'90s, and is largely responsible for the story we eventually saw on-screen. Ever since, Goldsman has been quite vocal about resurrecting Schumacher's original vision, and in comments during San Diego Comic-Con 2024, Goldsman claimed Warner Bros. needed to commit roughly $1 million to finish it and make it ready for public consumption. "There's some visual effects that need to be finished," said Goldsman. "There would be some music that would have to be if not re-scored or rewritten. The whole soup to nuts was about a million bucks." According to the writer, Warners was "on the verge" of actually releasing an official Schumacher cut prior to the Discovery merger, but the new regime scrapped the idea. Still, he promised to follow up on the project "once the new DC world is moving forward."
Now, Goldsman has provided another updated. During a 2025 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, he elaborated on his attempts to unearth the director's cut of "Batman Forever," which he confirmed very much exists. As he explained:
"After Joel died [in 2020], I reached out to Warners and said, 'There's a darker version of this movie.' We found it. It exists and it's incomplete, but more complete than you would think. Today there would be giant sections where the VFX wasn't done. In those days, so much of it was miniatures and practical effects — they were done. We were trying to dust it off, and then everybody stopped caring. But I lobby for it."
The Schumacher Cut Is A Darker Movie Than Batman Forever's Theatrical Cut

Most if not all of the scenes that were scrapped for the theatrical cut of "Batman Forever" are known to fans at this point. Perhaps the most prominent was a dream sequence/hallucination in which Val Kilmer's Bruce Wayne comes face-to-face with a giant grotesque bat creature known as the "Monarch bat," which was specially built by Rick Baker's Cinovation studio. In fact, the VFX team built two models: a small version which is seen flying towards camera in the theatrical cut, and a larger version Kilmer interacted with in the now well-known deleted scene.
In his THR interview, Akiva Goldsman referenced the Monarch bat, alongside several other scenes that were dropped from Joel Schumacher's original cut. It seems the confrontation with Baker's beast came during a scene in which Kilmer's Bruce Wayne lost his memory. "There's a section in the movie where he actually is hit in the head," said Goldsman. "He doesn't remember that he's Batman, and he goes back into the cave. There's this now rather famous Rick Baker bat that he faces." A similar scene was perfected by Christopher Nolan in "Batman Begins," but it would be interesting to see whether the full version of the "Forever" scene could outdo Nolan's take.
Elsewhere, there was a major revelation that would have made Bruce's pain at losing his parents even more complicated. As Goldsman explained, "Bruce is having these recurring visions of a red book, which turns out to be his father's diary. There's an entry that says, 'Martha and I want to stay home tonight. Bruce wants to see a movie, so we're going to take him out.' So he holds himself responsible [for their deaths]."
Most of this was known by fans, but at the very least, it's good to hear Goldsman continuing to keep the Schumacher cut in the conversation. Whether we'll ever actually see that version of the film remains very much unclear, especially since the days when superhero movies dominated the box office appear to be waning. Still, it would be nice to have the Schumacher cut if only to help "Batman Forever" reclaim its legacy from "Batman & Robin" and earn its rightful place in the discourse as a major moment in the history of the Dark Knight.
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Read the original article on SlashFilm.