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Who killed the Graysons?

When Robin made his first appearance in Detective Comics #38 (1940), the narrative stated that a mobster named Tony Zucco killed Dick Grayson’s acrobat parents.

The 1995 film Batman Forever retold Robin’s origin, with Two-Face being the one who kills the Graysons.

However, a recent report from The Wall Street Journal adds another name to the conspiracy, The Dark Knight Trilogy director Chris Nolan.

Let’s rewind to 2008, when Warner Bros. Television and CW announced one of their strangest ideas. The CW ordered a pilot for a Batman prequel called The Graysons. The show would’ve focused on young Dick Grayson’s life in the circus before his parents were killed. Dick would’ve been renamed D.J., because the network couldn’t sell the audience on a protagonist named Dick in 2008. The show was meant to be a companion piece to Smallville, the CW’s other DC superhero drama.

If you were around in 2008 when this news dropped, then you might remember how this idea was almost universally panned. Entertainment Weekly deemed it “the worst idea of the week.”  And thus, there was little surprise one month later when the studio announced that the project wasn’t moving forward.

“The studio has opted not to go forward with the development of The Graysons at this time as the concept doesn’t fit the current strategy for the Batman franchise,” Warner Bros. Television said in a statement to Variety.

This was basically studio talk saying that The Graysons would’ve hurt Batman’s brand, which at the time was riding high with The Dark Knight breaking box office records that same year. According to a report from Variety, Warner Bros. Pictures Group president Jeff Robinov had given the project his blessing but changed his mind shortly after.

What caused Robinov to change his mind? A recent article from The Wall Street Journal claims it was Chris Nolan. The article focuses on DC’s cinematic struggles leading up to James Gunn’s Superman, but there’s one line in the report that alludes to the ill-fated Graysons show. “[Nolan] was so adamant about his control of everything Batman that he convinced Warner Bros. to kill a TV show other producers were developing about the early life of sidekick Robin,” Ben Fritz writes.

While 2008 reports mentioned Nolan being uncomfortable with the project, they had put the blame for its cancellation solely on Robinov, stating that Nolan had no influence. Fritz’s reporting goes further than previous reports and seems to explain why Robinov had the change of heart. In other words, Nolan assumedly leaned on Robinov and convinced him to pull the project.

Chris Nolan has done a lot of great things for the DC Universe. Looking at the premise for The Graysons, killing the show might be one of the most important things Nolan has done. He’s not a hero; he’s a silent guardian.

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