In the end, George Clooney didn’t have to wallow in Schumacher’s cartoonish Batcave for too long before rising out of his potential career funk. In fact, as the actor told The Sun, his very next major role turned out to be his saving grace.
The movie in question was 1998’s “Out of Sight,” a Steven Soderbergh-directed comedic crime movie that features Clooney as career criminal Jack Foley and Jennifer Lopez as U.S. Marshal Karen Sisco. “Out of Sight” was nominated for two Academy Awards, and received numerous other awards (via IMDb). This was obviously the exact thing Clooney needed to bounce back from the Batman experience … which, in turn, was essential for his career, since he was still largely known as a TV actor at the time.
“Steven was coming off a couple of flops and I was coming off ‘Batman & Robin’ and we both needed a success,” Clooney described the leadup to “Out of Sight.” “Our backs were against the wall, in a way. I was still doing ‘ER’ at the time and there were always these conversations about whether you can go from television to film. It was a big deal — and I was losing that argument.”
Clooney also revealed that “Out of Sight” was far from a fluke. Instead, it was a very determined correction course to handle the aftermath from the disastrous Batman movie. “After ‘Batman & Robin’ I realised I was going to be held responsible for the movie, not just for the performance,” Clooney said. “And so we waited, and when I found that movie (Out Of Sight), we chased Steven down to direct it.”