It may be unfair to place the blame for the demise of the original Batman franchise at the feet of Akiva Goldsman, but he did write the screenplay for the Joel Schumacher-directed disaster that was Batman & Robin, a fact that does not escape Goldsman.
What got lost in Batman & Robin is the emotions aren't real. The worst thing to do with a serious comic book is to make it a cartoon. I'm still answering for that movie with some people.
Following Batman & Robin, Goldsman's screenwriting career took a hit. However, writing the screenplay for the multiple Academy Award-winning film A Beautiful Mind helped put Goldsman back on the map and he followed it up with a string of high-profile scripts, including The Da Vinci Code, Angels & Demons, I Am Legend, and I, Robot. Despite Batman & Robin, Goldsman has not sworn off superheroes or comic book properties. Goldsman is currently producing four DC Comics properties: Jonah Hex, The Losers, Lobo, and Swamp Thing.
In a recent interview with the LA Times, Goldsman compared his Jonah Hex to a classic "Spaghetti Western."
[Hex is] a character that has been described as having one foot on Earth and one foot beyond the grave, that he speaks to the dead ... at the same time he is very much [like Italian director Sergio Leone's] The Man With No Name.
For Swamp Thing, Goldsman is hoping to avoid comparisons to the 1982 Wes Craven movie, instead aiming for a tone more closely in line with the classic Alan Moore comic book stories.
We want a film with real Southern, dark horror overtones, a little bit like a classic Universal horror film.