Why George Clooney can’t watch his 1997 film ‘Batman & Robin’

Los Angeles, Dec 18  Hollywood superstar George Clooney says it is a physically painful experience for him to watch his 1997 superhero film, Batman & Robin. Clooney also revealed that action superstar Arnold Schwarzenegger, who played the villain Mr. Freeze in the film, got $25 million for the role.

“I couldn’t have done that one differently,” Clooney said when asked about production regrets during a conversation with Howard Stern on his SiriusXM show, reports hollywoodreporter.com.

“It’s a big machine, that thing. You have to remember at that point, I was just an actor getting an acting job. I wasn’t the guy who could greenlight a movie,” the actor added.

Clooney took over the role of Batman after Val Kilmer played the character in “Batman Forever”, following Michael Keaton’s run as Batman in two films directed by Tim Burton in the early nineties.

Clooney shared that he and Schwarzenegger did not work together on the production.

“We never even saw each other,” Clooney said, adding: “It’s a big, monster machine, and I just sort of jumped in and did what they said.”

Clooney feels everyone is to be blamed for the failure of the film.

“The truth of the matter is, I was bad in it. Akiva Goldsman — who’s won the Oscar for writing since then — he wrote the screenplay. And it’s a terrible screenplay, he’ll tell you. I’m terrible in it, I’ll tell you. Joel Schumacher, who just passed away, directed it, and he’d say, ‘Yeah, it didn’t work.’ We all whiffed on that one,” he shared.