Joel Schumacher, the director behind the Brat Pack classic St. Elmo’s Fire as well as The Lost Boys, Falling Down, Flatliners and two Batman movies, has reportedly passed away at age 80 after a yearlong battle with cancer.
Schumacher took over the Batman franchise after Tim Burton walked away from it, directing Batman Forever (starring Val Kilmer as the Caped Crusader, along with Tommy Lee Jones, Jim Carrey and Nicole Kidman) in 1995 and Batman & Robin (in which George Clooney took over as the titular superhero and Arnold Schwarzenegger starred as the villainous Mr. Freeze) in 1997. The director opted for a campier approach to the series, leaning on its comic-book roots for inspiration, and he caught heat for his decision to add nipples to Clooney’s Batsuit.
Schumacher apologized for the latter film — which was panned by critics — in a 2017 interview with Vice, saying, “I want to apologize to every fan that was disappointed because I think I owe them that. A lot of it was my choice. No one is responsible for my mistakes but me…I mean, I had a long history of fighting for unknowns, for fighting for a little extra budget when we needed it, so nobody never, ever forced me to make a decision I didn’t approve of.”
He began his career as a costume designer (including on Woody Allen’s 1973 film Sleeper), and he also wrote screenplays for 1976’s Sparkle, 1978’s Car Wash and perhaps most famously, The Wiz. Most recently, he directed two episodes of Netflix’s House of Cards in 2013.
Subscribe here for our free daily newsletter.
Thanks for reading InsideHook. Sign up for our daily newsletter and be in the know.
