A Batman game set in Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy got pretty far in the pre-production stage for developer Monolith Productions before it was shelved. Currently, Batman in video game form is most closely associated with Arkham Knight developer Rocksteady Studios. The three main Arkham games were released in 2009, 2011, and 2015, and all received near-universal acclaim.
Monolith Productions was started in 1994 and purchased by Warner Brothers Studios in 2004. The studio was originally known for creating the first two F.E.A.R. games. It then developed and released Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor in 2014 and its sequel Shadow of War in 2017. Those both achieved critical and commercial success, though Shadow of War did initially stir controversy over its use of microtransactions.
Monolith Productions spent about 18 months working on a Batman game set in the world of Nolan’s trilogy, according to a video from the video game history channel, DidYouKnowGaming?. The unfinished project was reported to tie in directly to the Dark Knight films and would feature linear story missions in an open-world map. The Dark Knight Batman game was going to have characters from the films and supposedly had some actors ready to lend their likeness and voices to their specific characters. It would include hand-to-hand, stealth, and gadget combat.
This Dark Knight game never made it past pre-production because Monolith was never able to get permission from Nolan to use the world he created, which was explicitly required. Some say that Nolan was simply too busy to respond to or work with Monolith, as he was working on The Dark Knight Rises at the time. Others speculate that the poorly received Batman Begins video game made in 2005 soured the director on the idea of video games altogether. Regardless, Monolith would eventually take some of the assets developed for this Batman game and use them for Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor.
It would have been interesting to see what Monolith’s take on Batman looked like. However, the cancellation seemed to be for good reason. Video games based on movies are rarely received well, though Jumanji: The Video Game shows us that developers are still willing to try. These kinds of games are made even more difficult to develop when the director of the source material is unable or unwilling to collaborate. This game would have also had some stiff competition coming on the heels of Arkham City, one of the most critically lauded superhero video games of all time. Perhaps it’s a good thing that this game never made it out of the Bat-Cave.
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Source: DidYouKnowGaming?
