George Clooney Believed He Destroyed the Iconic DC Franchise for Good with Batman & Robin
George Clooney's acting career has been nothing short of phenomenal, but one of his movies was so terrible the actor thought it was the end of the entire Batman franchise.
For many decades, George Clooney has been a massive household name in the movie industry, and for a good reason: the actor did an insane number of incredibly popular TV shows and movies, and he's still going strong. Everyone knows that casting Clooney is almost a recipe for success.
While this statement is kind of true today as Clooney became more proficient, back in the day, the actor managed to make the most horrendous, lackluster, and hated Batman movie that has ever existed. His 1997's Batman & Robin was not just a bomb but an actual tragedy for DC as the film butchered one of the studio's primary franchises.
George Clooney himself knows exactly what an abomination he created back in the day, and he's still sorry for it. Apologies and jokes aside, for many years, the actor was thinking he'd singlehandedly killed the entire Batman franchise for good, and he couldn't stop blaming himself!
“I always apologize for Batman & Robin. Let me just say that I’d actually thought I’d destroyed the franchise until somebody else brought it back years later and changed it. I thought at the time that this was going to be a very good career move. Um, it wasn’t," Clooney shared on The Graham Norton Show.
His assumption was quite close to the truth: after the disaster that Batman & Robin turned out to be, no one dared to touch the ruined franchise for the next eight years despite it's general popularity.
Fortunately, in 2005, saving the actor's conscience came Christopher Nolan with his full relaunch of the franchise. His Batman Begins ignored the failure that Batman & Robin was and offered a new, way darker and grimmer take on the story...and this came as a huge relief for George Clooney who'd spent all those years since 1997 thinking he'd destroyed the Caped Crusader altogether.