Christopher Nolan Didn't Want to Make 'The Dark Knight' Initially

Could you imagine if director Christopher Nolan didn't sign on to make The Dark Knight? Well, most fans don't know that the director didn't want a Batman Begins sequel, instead he wanted the 2005 movie as a standalone. That idea died pretty quickly, however, and now look what we got out of it: arguably the greatest Batman movie ever.

One of the things that convinced Nolan to make the hit sequel was that he wanted to see Batman interact with the Joker. What fans got was a very surreal Batman, and an Oscar winning performance from the late and great Heath Ledger.

Even though it would seem like Batman Begins' ending sets up for a sequel--with Gordon giving Batman a Joker card--Nolan really didn't think he'd be doing another one. In fact, The Dark Knight is Nolan's first ever sequel. In the past, the director was known for films like Memento (2000) and Insomnia (2002).

“I didn’t have any intention of making a sequel to Batman Begins and I was quite surprised to find myself wanting to do it,” Nolan explained to Empire Magazine. “I just got caught up in the process of imagining how you would see a character like The Joker through the prism of what we did in the first film.”

In the end, we're glad Nolan decided to break his streak of standalones to make two more great Batman movies.

[h/t: Mental Floss]