Twenty years later, Batman & Robin director Joel Schumacher is apologizing for helming the worst film in the Caped Crusader’s cinematic history.

“Look, I apologize,” Schumacher said in an interview withVice. “I want to apologize to every fan that was disappointed because I think I owe them that.”

Released in the summer of 1997, Batman & Robin introduced then-ER star George Clooney as the Dark Knight alongside Chris O’Donnell’s corny Robin, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s horrendous Mr. Freeze, Uma Thurman’s vomit-inducing Poison Ivy and Alicia Silverstone’s cheesy Batgirl.

It was Schumacher’s second Bat-film following 1995’s Batman Forever, which starred Val Kilmer.

Up to that point, Schumacher’s “batting average was good.”

The 77-year-old helmed such classics as The Lost Boys, The Client and Falling Down.

“Then after Batman & Robin, I was scum. It was like I had murdered a baby.”

In addition to the critical drubbing it took, Batman & Robin was a massive financial disappointment and the character didn’t reappear onscreen until 2005’s reboot, Batman Begins.

Schumacher also explained the film’s much-derided inclusion of nipples on Clooney’s Batman costume.

“By the time Batman Forever came around, rubber molding had become so much more advanced,” he recalled. “So I said, let’s make it anatomical and gave photos of those Greek statues and those incredible anatomical drawings you see in medical books [to lead sculptor Jose Fernandez]. He did the nipples and when I looked at them, I thought, that’s cool.”

Looking back, though, Schumacher knows it was a mistake.

“It’s going to be on my tombstone, I know it.”

Clooney has already apologized for Batman & Robin – twice.

“I thought at the time this was going to be a very good career move,” he said during an appearance on the Graham Norton Show in 2015. “Um, it wasn’t.”

Twitter: @markhdaniell

MDaniell@postmedia.com