In 1989, Tim Burton’s Batman would forever change Hollywood. It’s hard to imagine now, but the film’s success was never guaranteed. The movie had several strikes against it long before production began. The picture’s massive budget (for its time) meant that Warner Brothers was taking a huge risk. This week we’ll take a behind the scenes look at Batman thirty years after its premiere.
While 1966’s campy Batman was the caped crusader’s first major appearance outside of his comic book, Columbia Pictures produced a modestly successful Batman serial that was meant to build on the success of fellow DC Comics star Superman’s serial and radio show. DC Comics was unaffiliated with any Hollywood studio at the time and had merely licensed the character. The serial’s lukewarm reception led Columbia Pictures to let its option lapse. It would take nearly twenty years for Batman to get another chance to prove he could successfully make the transition out of the comics and onto theater and television screens.
ABC optioned Batman in the 1960’s with the hope that it could turn the film into a colorful hit. As the only television network at the time that was not owned by a company that manufactured televisions, it had been slow at adopting color. By the mid-1960’s it had fallen far behind when it came to color programming and a show based on a colorful comic book seemed like an amazing opportunity. ABC brought 20th-Century-Fox in to produce the show who in turn hired Greenway Productions to make the show. Greenway originally wanted to produce a film that would lead into the ABC show. ABC liked the idea, but 20th-Century-Fox, still recovering from the mammoth failure of Cleopatra wanted the show’s first season to come first. This proved to be a smart decision. Batman the TV show was a huge hit, so America was more than ready to make the film an even bigger hit. Eventually, ABC decided that the show was too expensive to produce despite its success and canceled the show. Unfortunately, the show’s sets were destroyed right before NBC swept in to save it. The high cost of rebuilding the sets led NBC to change its mind. Batman was now in hibernation.
It would be Batman’s friendly DC Comics rival Superman who would revive interest in the caped crusader. Superman: The Movie was a huge success and brought about the first golden era of superhero films. Two producers who sought to make a much grittier Batman film purchased the rights in 1979 and began working on a script. The Batman project would go through various hands with different scripts being written causing many production delays. By the mid-1980’s it finally seemed like the project was finally taking off. Unfortunately, the Superman franchise would very quickly crash and burn, eventually dying after 1987’s Superman IV: The Quest For Peace.
After suffering a huge loss after Superman IV, Warner Brothers reconsidered the Batman project. Lucky for Batman, a director who had just signed a huge new contract with Warner Brothers became interested in the film.
