Really? Dammit. I kinda thought it might be something like that, although I hadn't seen anything to contradict it. Someone ought to make a Batman fan-film in the Orson Welles style. You know what? I just had a related thought. Warner Brothers has been milking DC for plenty of money with all these superhero flicks, right? Well, here's what they should do - they should start releasing 'Elseworlds' pictures. And you know who'd make these pictures? We would - the fans. 'Elseworlds' productions would be feature-length films made FOR fans, BY fans, depicting DC characters in ways that do not quite fit with DC movie continuity, which wouldn't be difficult, as the movies have made some pretty large changes at times (look at 'Dark Knight'). It's not all that far-fetched, either - people make incredibly elaborate fan films from scratch, some of which are close to feature-length; you can watch them all over the 'net. These things are purely a labor of love; they put huge amounts of time and energy into costumes and cameras and whatnot, and they don't make a dime. Think of what they could make if they thought their stuff would get into theaters! It'd work like this - WB would basically act as the distributor, and nothing more. They'd basically say 'if you manage to get these films made, we will put them in theaters and give them that 'professional touch', so they won't embarrass us. You'll have to take care of making it and funding it, but you WILL get a chunk of the royalties when the film is released.' The fans would go wild! I mean, how many times have you walked out of the movie theater and said to yourself 'man, even I could've made a better movie than that!' Well, this would allow you to. Think 'The Spirit' stunk? Make your own version. Think you could make a great Blue Beetle movie? Here's your chance to prove it. And you could experiment - you could mess around with the characters in all kinds of ways, and in all kinds of styles. You could make a Batman film in a 'Dr. Caligari' style, all stripped-down German expressionism, or a recreation of the old 'Spy Smasher' serial, or a Question movie as film noir. You could make superhero art films if you wanted to! And WB would be making money hand over fist, since all they'd have to pay for would be the distribution, instead of the actual making of the movies - they'd save millions. What's more, if it WORKED - if any of these films made any money at the box office - fans could probably get producers interested enough so that they could get something close to professional funding! And that could possibly get some big-name actors interested, and from there, the sky's the limit! Even if these only worked as collections of short films, that could lead to bigger and better things. Hell, 'The Blair Witch Project' was a huge success, and that was basically made by nobodies - why couldn't something a little more ambitious work? I mean, OK, it'll never happen, because movie producers are stupid. But wouldn't it be cool?