Veteran filmmaker Joel Schumacher has passed away after a year-long battle with cancer.
Schumacher’s films were a staple in the cinemas for over three decades. After a short career as a costume designer, working on films such as Woody Allen’s Sleeper and Interiors, Schumacher made his directorial debut with the 1981 Lily Tomlin film The Incredible Shrinking Woman. He would go on the direct 80s and 90s classics like the Brat Pack vehicle St. Elmo’s Fire and the Kiefer Sutherland films The Lost Boys and Flatliners.
The mid nighties found Schumacher deep in John Grisham adaptations and Batman films, helming The Client with Susan Sarandon and Tommy Lee Jones, Batman Forever with Jones, Val Kilmer, Nicole Kidman and Jim Carrey, A Time to Kill with Sandra Bullock, Samuel L. Jackson and Matthew McConaughey and Batman & Robin, with George Clooney, Arnold Schwarzenegger and the infamous Bat nipples. Schumacher also directed the 1993 black comedy/thriller Falling Down with Michael Douglas (our own Lucas Longacre wrote a retrospective on Falling Down just yesterday).
The 2000s had Schumacher directing films such as The Phantom of the Opera, Phone Booth with Colin Farrell and Kiefer Sutherland and The Number 23 with Jim Carrey. Schumacher spent some time in television, directing a few episodes of House of Cards, but his last film was the 2011 thriller Trespass with Nicolas Cage and Nicole Kidman.
Joel Schumacher was 80 years old.