Joel Schumacher doesn't think Batman and Robin were ever gay. He also says he should not have made 1997's Batman & Robin, which makes sense since it was immediately slammed by critics upon landing in theaters. Comic book fans were not into the movie at all and many thought that Schumacher deliberately made the movie campy on purpose and portrayed Bruce Wayne as a closeted gay man. "If I wasn't gay, they would never say those things," says the director.

Along with Bruce Wayne allegedly being a closeted gay man in Batman & Robin, Joel Schumacher was also accused of redesigning the Batmobile to be more phallic. These are all things that the director denies. The director does say that others have said Batman and Robin were gay for years now. He had this to say.

"This all started way before me. Long before I came along, someone wrote a whole thing about what the real message of fairy tales and children's stories are. Snow White was all about having bad stepmothers. And Batman and Robin are two homosexual men living in a cave, living together. There's always been this thing about Batman and Robin being gay."

When asked directly about throwing some secret messages into Batman & Robin, Joel Schumacher says, "No. Nor do I ever think Batman and Robin are gay." With that being said, Schumacher does say, "There were a lot of people who I would say, in one particular community, wanted George Clooney to be gay so badly." That's completely different from what people have accused Schumacher of doing to the movie.

When it comes down to it, Joel Schumacher learned an important lesson when making Batman & Robin. The movie still isn't looked upon in a positive light, even over twenty years after it hit theaters. Regardless, Schumacher regrets his decision now for reasons that you might not expect. He explains.

"You know what I think? I shouldn't have made a sequel, and that's all there is to it. I learned that sequels are only made for one reason. I'm sure that Batman Forever was the cheapest Batman movie ever made because Val didn't get a lot of money, Nicole (Kidman) didn't, Chris O'Donnell didn't, and I didn't. Tommy got a bit of a payday because he'd just won the Oscar for The Fugitive and Jim Carrey had already done Ace Ventura."

In an interview from a few years ago, Joel Schumacher summed it up best by saying, "I think because I am gay, people read into things." This seems to be the most logical answer, unless the director has been lying about the matter for decades now, which doesn't really seem like something he would want to do. There we have it, there are no winks and nods intentionally put into Batman & Robin, at least according to Schumacher. The interview with Joel Schumacher was originally conducted by Vulture.