So, lets say that Batman and Robin, due to some major changes, is at least moderately successful with critics. Would this set the stage for Batman Triumphant? Also, if Batman Triumphant is released, how does it effect the live action series of Batman movies? Do the Nolan films ever get made?
No chance.
Batman Begins was made at the end of a very very long process of various Batman projects being proposed and rejected, and its final shape was a direct result of how awful
Batman & Robin was.
Batman Triumphant would send the film series off in a completely different direction.
In any case, I don't think there's any way to make
Batman & Robin and not have it be shallow and terrible.
Batman & Robin is inherently shallow and terrible. Once
Batman Forever was made and Warner Brothers demanded "Do that again, but more so this time!" its path was set. The only thing you can do is limit the damage -- critics will never like it, but the public will see it if it's fun enough.
The
Batman Triumphant script hasn't been released, but apparently its tone is somewhere between
Batman Forever and the original 1989
Batman film. So it's entirely possible that
Batman Triumphant would cause the series to rebound. It becomes the equivalent of
The Undiscovered Country, with
Batman & Robin being
The Final Frontier.
So that's five movies. Warner Bros may push for a sixth, but Akiva Goldsman had already refused to return for
Batman Triumphant, so Schumacher might not return to direct yet another sequel. Clooney and O'Donnell might not want to come back either. In that case, they may decide to make a clean break of it and make a live-action
Batman Beyond movie. (In OTL Warner Bros had a choice between making adaptations of
Batman Beyond or
Batman: Year One, and they picked
Year One; this has to have been motivated by
Batman & Robin's failure, so in the ATL they may go for
Beyond instead -- push it into the future rather than starting over.)
I wonder if there is anyway that Schumacher never directs Batman Forever, thereby separating him from the Batman series algtogether... maybe the parental groups that reject Batman Returns IOTL never convince Warner Brothers to get rid of Tim Burton, thus butterflying away Batman Forever and Batman on Ice.
Thing is,
Batman Returns was never
not going to freak out parental groups and thus freak out Warner Bros. Again,
Batman Forever was a natural consequence of
Batman Returns -- even if it wasn't Schumacher who got hired it'd be someone else who'd make a movie that's merely bad in a slightly different way. If you want to make a good third Batman movie, then you have to prevent
Batman Returns from getting made. And that means getting rid of Burton
earlier.