Director Kevin Smith has teased that he plans to screen the Joel Schumacher Cut of Batman Forever for fans to watch.
Will Kevin Smith be screening the Schumacher Cut of Batman Forever?
On the most recent episode of his Fatman Beyond podcast, Smith suggested that after the Smodcastle Cinemas screening of the Clerks cartoon on July 1, he and any audience members who stay would “watch something else” before confirming that it would “probably” be the Schumacher Cut of Batman Forever.
“Once our show is done, if you stick around, we’re going to watch something else,” Smith teased. “I’m not going to say what it is, but it’s probably the Schumacher Cut of Batman Forever. I’m not charging for it, so I don’t want to hear shit from Warner Bros. and stuff, but for the people who are really interested — because there are a fucking legion of people online who are like, ‘Release it, please put it up online!’ And that’s ridiculous, I would get sued the pants off of. But if I showed it on my laptop … as long as I don’t sell tickets, I believe I can do it.”
Batman Forever is the third installment in the Burton/Schumacher Batman film franchise. Considered a standalone sequel to Burton’s 1992 film Batman Returns, Batman Forever stars Val Kilmer as Bruce Wayne/Batman, replacing Michael Keaton in the role. In the 1995 film, Batman tries to stop Two-Face (Tommy Lee Jones) and the Riddler (Jim Carrey) from extracting information from the minds of Gotham City citizens. The DC film also introduced Bruce’s ward Dick Grayson (Chris O’Donnell) to the franchise.
Reports of an extended cut of Batman Forever first emerged in 2020, shortly after the passing of Schumacher. The director’s cut reportedly contains about 50 minutes of additional footage, including Bruce having a vision of a human-sized bat. Warner Bros. has since confirmed the existence of the Schumacher Cut, but has stated that they have no plans to release it at this time.
The theatrical cut of Batman Forever is available to stream on Max.
