Tim Burton received an executive producer credit on Warner Brothers on Batman Forever
although it was a producer-in-name only credit as Burton was effectively pushed from the cinematic
franchise he had helped orchestrate the creation of. Beyond the professional courtesy of meeting
the new director and writers only once, Burton would have zero input or involvement with what
would eventually become Batman Forever it's impossible to discuss burton's presence on
production as there wasn't one but to discuss his absence on 'Batman 3' is to trace back to just how
bad the backlash from Batman Returns was. Batman Returns was not quite the 90-minute toy commercial
Warner Brothers were said to have hoped for and with the Batman property considered the studio's
most prized commodity time was running out on whether or not to commit to the start of Burton's
pre-production or to replace him, and his Germanic expressionistic fairy tale take on the superhero,
the high budget overspill on 'Returns' hadn't helped either. Insiders quoted the final tab
for production salaries prints and advertising at over 100 million dollars, far more than what
was officially reported. Warner Brothers bosses were distressed that the movie was ''too grim,
too off-putting, too dark and not a lot of fun.'' The boss of a rival studio publicly
taunted Warners saying ''they got just what they asked for, if you bring back Tim Burton
and Michael Keaton you're stuck with their vision. You can't expect ''Honey I Shrunk The Batman.''
America was outraged! NBC devoted a whole talk show episode to the topic of ''Parents against
Batman Returns'' where a panel of concerned parents would sit and recount the horrors they had
witnessed. Hello everyone by now you pretty much have had to have heard that the summer's big movie
is Batman Returns in its first couple of weeks it has already grossed more than a hundred million
dollars at the box office and it is already creating controversy. It was very violent. It was
a total attack against kids the whole movie. I saw it twice to get a real good view of it!
Some parents are exasperated. I think it's not appropriate at all that they're doing this kind
of tie-in for the kids and when she drives by the movie she says she wants to go see the movie and
when I tell her she can't see it she burst into tears. It's a con job out there on
our kids! They're not really caring about the welfare of our children! Did it scare you? Yes.
They threw him off a bridge into a sewer, he's a baby, he grows up to be the Penguin.
Catwoman is a woman who gets thrown out of a 20-story building because she speaks her mind
to her boss. She's abused and the issues of good and evil were very confusing and very confounding
to the children. Break and we'll come back and continue to talk about Batman Returns.
You're going to executive produce Batman 3? I guess so I you know I, I'm an executive type as
you can tell. That's right and I think I'm just moving into the area where I'm best suited as an
executive type. And these Armani suits are killin' me. Yeah I'm the executive type definitely. So
you're not going to direct though? Well I, I, yeah, yeah, I, erm, i, you know that's all sort
of at the early stages but yeah I'm not going you know, I uh, I uh, you know? You know it's like,
you know. McDonald's was forced to issue a televised apology. McDonald's had licensed
the merchandise tie-in without seeing a rough cut of the film and were now receiving negative press
which in corporate business is the one and only big no-no. Sources claimed that Warner Brothers
then made a solemn vow to the burger chain and swore a promise that the third Batman film WOULD
be McDonald's friendly, with, or without, Tim Burton. Harry Colombe, Michael Keaton's
friend and former manager would say at the time, ''Burton is not the hero type, his heart beats
for the outsider, look at Edward Scissorhands. The predisposition for Michael is always to do Batman.
Keaton did originally plan to be batman again, he was interviewed in 1992 saying
if there's a third batman movie and all the ingredients are in place, hopefully, I would
be happy to do it again, but right now it would have to be Tim Burton or somebody who had a real
interesting and different take on Batman for me to be interested again. It's difficult and hopefully
a third film might take some time to clarify this. Of course we now know that didn't happen.
I think there's something else that, sort of at the end of that which kind of
made me realize not to do a third one, ''that doesn't go well with happy meals'' You know, uh,
uh, blah blah blah blah, so there did turn out, the overall I think vibe at the end of the day
was that the film was darker and therefore going down a dark and ominous path. I actually
at one point, I think considered doing a third one until I realized in talking with Warner Brothers,
they basically came out and said they didn't want me to do another one. So
I remember being in the meeting, I got thinking ''Wait a minute, we're talking about this movie
and you really, basically, you don't want me to do this! ''No no no no no no but you
don't really don't want to do this kind of movie again do you Tim?'' ''But you don't want to do,
you want to do your, you want to do some movie that's...'' this and that, you don't really try
to talk me out of it you know so I, I realized that, you know, it's probably best to, I didn't
go further. Eventually and predictably Burton was nudged off the trilogy and his replacement Joel
Schumacher was hired. Keaton, who had earned 5 million for batman and a reported 10 million
dollars for the sequel could have made as much as 15 million dollars for the third movie would
decide to walk away also. There were all kinds of reports the time that I know have been questioned
since, people were saying you were unhappy with the salary offer, that the villains were getting
more complex but the hero wasn't or other stuff, but fundamentally the reason you did not continue.
It's not a great deal with speculation because I can simplify for you. It sucked.
The script never was great right, I didn't understand why he wanted to do what he
wanted to do which was to make it not dark right, yeah, I knew we were, I hung on for
many meetings and I was polite up to a point about saying, you know? Can you think? Maybe
are you getting this? And, Do you understand the thing? But I knew it was in trouble when he said
''Why does everything have to be so dark?'' and okay, well, witnessed the death of his parents
you know ? And not only that like, physically it had to be brightened up and also then it
became the, it became the thing of ''oh let's do let's do bright colored cameos.'' I mean I just,
and I you know now, now, I gotta say had Tim been saying ''hey I want to
experiment with something.'' You might have been more open? I would have been
waaay open to it, because I thought one, in this guy's hands who knows? You know? Ethan Hawke
was immediately offered the role of Batman but rejected it saying he had no interest.
A decision he would years later look back on with hindsight and regret. None of burton's ideas made
it to paper or to any fleshed out ideas stage as his once celebrated take on the material simply
wasn't fancied by producers anymore. I remember toying with the idea of doing another one and I
remember going into Warner Brothers and having a meeting, I'm going, you know, you could do this,
we could do that, and go like Tim don't you want to do like a smaller movie now? You know,
just something that's more, and like, about, you know, half hour into the meeting I go,
''You don't want me to make another one do you?'' And like, ''no no no no no no no''
I and I, I just said no. I know you, and so I, just, we just stopped it right there.
New writers and set designers were asked to go in a different direction the original draft of
batman 3 by Lee and Janet Scott Batchelor with Burton linked as a producer at this point,
would focus heavily on Bruce Wayne's attempts to reconcile his true self with his alter ego.
Actor Marlon Wayans was still under contract to portray a version of Robin The Boy Wonder
in Batman 3. Wayans had been due to appear in Batman Returns as a character simply titled 'The
Kid.' A car mechanic with the initial R on his overalls. A young man who had initially worked for
the Penguin's crime gang but would later defect from a life of crime and team up with Batman.
It's assumed that Burton's third Batman would have seen this character finally debut and work
alongside an initially reluctant Bruce Wayne. Designs from the earliest stages of Schumacher's
development would include concept art by H.R Geiger, re-envisioning the Batmobile into a
scissor-like design. Along with the Jose Fernandez suits, are often touted as designs as from when
Keaton was still attached, but the images are from after Val Kilmer had already signed on.
Billy Dee Williams was almost certain to have been returning as the D.A Harvey Dent from
the first movie, having his character already scratched from Batman Returns,
it's assumed the third film would finally see him flesh out the role and the origins of Two-Face and
complete the arc of a man who goes from fighting an unwinnable war against Gotham's crime factions,
to becoming a master criminal himself. And Billy Dee Williams told me, the reason he wanted to do
the movie is because he was gonna become Two-Face in another movie. I was looking to create a kind
of a flamboyant a guy, a guy who was bigger than life, I had, uh, Adam Clayton Powell in mind
when I played the character, he was not only a politician but he was a rev, a preacher and he was
a playboy, you talk about a romantic character. Mr Knox, we have enough problems in this city without
worrying about 'ghosts and goblins'. That's not that's not a denial. I was happy that I was asked
to participate you know? I always feel good about that because it's saying people when they see me
as an individual as an actor, they're not looking at me based purely on my ethnicity
but looking at a certain quality that I might bring to a situation so that made me feel very
very good. I really wanted desperately to do, obviously, Two-Face. I mean I was hoping that
it would segue into that and that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to see what I could do with it,
it would have been different than Tommy Lee's. I got my own kind of madness,
in fact people would write about it say, ah Billy Dee should be doing it but you know,
what that's the way life is. Showbiz baby! To get a handle on Burton's first take on Dent
it's worth dipping into scenes that didn't make it into the shooting script of the first film.
Harvey Dent is possibly aware of Bruce Wayne's duality and true identity,
as suggested by the line, I don't have access to all of your expert sources.
Here in the originals early script drafts not only was Bruce's party a fundraiser for an as yet
unelected Harvey, like in Christopher Nolan's 'The Dark Knight', but it's acknowledged that Bruce is
best friends with Jim Gordon and Harvey, so that could have been an interesting dynamic. Warner
Brothers had offered scriptwriting duties to Lee and Janet Scott Batchelor based on the strength
of their recently sold spec script 'Smoke And Mirrors' they wrote the first draft with Keaton's
voice in mind as Batman and they're quoted as saying they wrote the Riddler character with
Robin Williams in mind, although no deal was ever formally offered according to Williams' agents.
It's very likely Burton would have been looking at the Riddler as his next villain.
Riddler was present in Burton's original Batman treatment written back in 1986, so he clearly
has an angle on the character, and, at the end of Batman Returns' first draft, there was a reference
made, after the death of the Penguin, where one out-of-work criminal comments to his buddy
''I hear the Riddler is hiring.'' Brad Dourif as The Scarecrow is another idea that does the
rounds whenever this topic is discussed, although the actor himself put that rumor
to bed saying ''You know, I've heard that. One time I saw Tim Burton on an airplane and he was
looking at me very interestedly but never spoke to him about it and I think I wouldn't have been
big enough a star for anyone to cast me in that role. He might have been interested but I doubt
the powers that be would have let him do it.'' Dourif would also say that Burton had originally
wanted him to play The Joker in 1989's Batman, but Warner Brothers quickly overruled the director. We
also know that Keaton himself was more interested in an origin prequel take on Batman. Showing the
audience Bruce Wayne's backstory. His journey from traumatized orphan to the growing anger,
his preparation and training, his building of the suit and Batmobile, to reveal how Bruce
acquired the detective and combat skills to wage an efficient war on Gotham's criminal
elements. All the elements that made 'Batman: Year One' and 'The Man Who Falls' such great comics,
and of course, Christopher Nolan's 'Batman Begins'. The concept of a Burton-Keaton Batman
trilogy bookend, continually remains one of the great What Ifs? in the superhero movie genre.
Despite his practically non-existent involvement Burton has been asked a great many times about why
he didn't direct it and his answer has remained the same for over 20 years. He had the meeting. He
got the vibe he wasn't really welcome and then, wasn't sure if he was even still interested in
the caped crusader anymore. His final word on the topic was to say, ''I think I made my contribution
to the Batman legacy and I just naturally moved on to other things.'' An interesting post script to
the tale is that Keaton, currently reprising his role in the currently in-production 'The Flash'
is also said to be appearing in an upcoming 'Batman Beyond' live-action version. And it's
said that Keaton, several times now, has requested that the production hire Tim Burton to direct.
So that the two can finally complete the work they began in 1989. If
I leave you with anything, I'm going to leave you with these two words,
and these two words are... ''I'm Batman!''