10 First Choices For Big Movie Roles (That Would Have Totally Sucked)
7. Bill Murray As Bruce Wayne (Batman)
At one point, the movie that would eventually become Tim Burton's lurid 1989 Batman was going to star Bill Murray and Eddie Murphy. Murray was to play Bruce Wayne and his caped counterpart, while Murphy was set to portray his sidekick Robin. This was during a time in which Murray's regular collaborator Ivan Reitman was attached to direct a script by Tom Mankiewicz that Warner Bros had shown to various filmmakers.
It doesn't take a great stretch of the imagination to believe that this would have been a more overtly comedic take on Batman than the one Burton would go on to make. Reitman and Murray would have been a better fit for the campy madness of the Adam West era in the 1960s than the darker edge that Warner Bros would eventually embrace in a movie that gets a lot of credit for popularising the PG-13 certificate as a blockbuster sweet spot.
Without the Burton Batman, it's difficult to imagine Christopher Nolan making The Dark Knight, which turned the screw even further on Burton's grungy Gotham. While it might have been interesting to see Murray go dark, the casting suggested by Reitman doesn't lend itself to that kind of movie.