Zach Cregger’s Unmade HENCHMAN Put a Pharmacist in the Middle of Batman and The Joker’s War

Before Zach Creggersent a medical courier into a nightmare with Resident Evil, he had another wild idea involving two of the biggest characters in comics, Batman and the Joker. The catch? His movie wouldn’t actually be about either of them.

Cregger wrote a spec script calledHenchman, a horror movie set in Gotham City during a massive clash between Batman and the Joker. Rather than following the Dark Knight or the Clown Prince of Crime, the story centers on an ordinary pharmacist who gets caught in the middle of their increasingly dangerous conflict.

Cregger recently talked about the concept again to Men’s Health, saying: “It’s a script called Henchman. It’s about a normal guy. It’s about a pharmacist who lives in Gotham City, and he gets accidentally sucked into this incredible power play between Batman and The Joker.

“And he finds himself a very integral part of something. And so, it’s a weird movie. It’s someone living on the periphery of all the stories in Gotham that we know of, and it’s about some rando. I’m not the world’s biggest Batman guy at all, but I just liked this story. I liked this character. I liked what happened to him, so it was just fun.”

Gotham is practically built for this kind of story. Imagine trying to fill prescriptions and make it home alive while Batman and Joker turn half the city into their personal battlefield. Forget being a superhero. Surviving your shift sounds difficult enough.

The idea of exploring a superhero universe through regular people has been tackled before. NBC’s Powerless took a comedic approach to everyday life in the DC Universe in 2017. Vanessa Hudgens starred as the head of R&D at Wayne Security, where the company’s inventions had a habit of finding their way to Batman. The series lasted only nine episodes before it was canceled.

An even closer comparison might be Marvels, the 1994 four-issue comic miniseries from Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross. That story viewed Marvel history through newspaper photographer Phil Sheldon, showing enormous events such as the arrival of Galactus and the death of Gwen Stacy from the perspective of ordinary New Yorkers.

Henchman would have applied a similar perspective to Gotham, but the script also ended up playing an important role in Cregger’s career.

His first feature as a co-director, Miss March, bombed at the box office and landed a brutal 5% Rotten Tomatoes score. The reception left Cregger questioning whether directing was something he should continue pursuing. The Whitest Kids U’ Know cast member instead concentrated on acting and gradually built up a collection of roles.

Things changed while he was in Fiji filming the TBS series Wrecked. Cregger started writing Henchman at night in his bungalow, and for the first time in years, he had a screenplay he was genuinely excited about.

There was one obvious obstacle. Batman, Joker, Gotham City, and everything surrounding them belonged to a giant franchise Cregger didn’t control.

That gave him another idea. If he could write a script he loved using Batman’s world, could he create something he liked just as much without relying on someone else’s characters?

The answer became Barbarian. That horror film changed the direction of Cregger’s career, and his fascination with placing ordinary people in terrifying situations has continued. His new Resident Evil takes a similar approach by entering the familiar horror franchise through a new character rather than simply recycling its established heroes.

It makes Henchman particularly interesting in retrospect. Years before Resident Evil, Cregger was already playing with the idea of entering a massive fictional universe through the side door and asking what happens to some random person unlucky enough to be standing nearby when everything goes to hell.

That approach has worked out pretty well for him. Resident Evil is now projected to open above $50 million for the weekend, giving Cregger the biggest opening of his directing career.

Henchman may have never made it to the screen, but the script helped Cregger rediscover his confidence as a filmmaker and ultimately led him toward Barbarian and Resident Evil.

Still, the thought of a Zach Cregger horror movie about an ordinary pharmacist trapped in the middle of a Batman and Joker war is way too cool to forget.