George Clooney says it physically hurts him to watch Batman & Robin

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

It's no secret that George Clooney isn't the biggest fan of Batman & Robin, but while speaking on The Howard Stern Show on SiriusXM, Clooney went the extra mile and stated that it actually "physically" hurts him to watch the film these days.

While Batman & Robin certainly ramped up the camp and felt like one big toy commercial, I'd imagine that there are people out there who actually enjoy the film, but Clooney definitely isn't one of them.

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.' You know, we all whiffed on that one.

Clooney went on to say that even though he has regrets about the film, he "couldn't have done that one differently" as the project was a "big machine," and at the time, he was "just an actor getting an acting job. I wasn't the guy who could greenlight a movie." The big star of Batman & Robin was arguably Arnold Schwarzenegger, who Clooney said was paid $25 million for the film compared to Clooney's $1 million. Clooney's experience with the film, as well as the fallout, was so miserable that he actually warned Ben Affleck against taking on the role of the Dark Knight for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. "I actually did talk to him about it. I said, ‘Don’t do it.' It was only from my experience, which is, you know…" Clooney said last year, before adding, "He did great, though."