The latest scop is that Hollywood wants to do a gritty low budget-movie with the dark knight being way darker and a little bit more ruthless. Probably one of the best ideas Hollywood had lately, considering that most movies are based on license properties anyway. After lots of talk about a new Batman-movie by either Darren Aronofsky (Requiem for a Dream) or Christopher Nolan (Memento), "Dead End" popped up at the Comic Con 2003.This short-film was directed by music video director Sandy Collora and produced by Simon Tams and Daren Hicks.

"The budget was a little over 30 thousand dollars, and the film was shot in 4 days by cinematographer Vince Toto. We had a very small lighting package, minimal equipment, and a very small crew. Quite frankly, all these reports you got about 3A huge crew2 were falseS Yeah, there were a ton of people there, but 75% of them were lookielus, trying to take pictures and see what was going on. Our security guard, none other than lovely, uber-producer Daren Hicks herself, kept them all at bay, while Simon (uber-producer #2) kept it raining all night, and gave new meaning to the word hustle."
Sandy Collora in an interview with Brother Geek

Actor and muscleman Clark Bartram plays Batman while Andrew Koenig. Son of Walter Koenig, aka Chekov from Star Trek, looks like a perfect Joker. For some reason, H.R. Giger's Alien and a trio of predators are in this one too which also makes it a preview of the "Aliens vs.Predator"-movie which might still see the light of day next century. The film is just a promo-thing for everyone who was involved. It's a fan-film in 35mm, but these eight minutes kick ten times more ass than all the other Batman-movies all-together. Even the pros inside the industry loved it.

Well, whatever, "Dead End" looks like the early fourties-version with ´some more hard-boiled ingredients.

BATMAN - DEAD END (8:04 Min./48 MB)
There is also a "making of" online now!

Visit Collora Studios
for more information and pictures.
Actor Clark Bartram (Batman) has a homepage with more pictures too.

Also check out the other fanfilms hosted by theforce.net