10 Movie Roles That Almost Were Cast VERY Differently

Tim Burton's 1989 Batman is a seminal superhero movie, one that manages to combine a comic strip aesthetic with the singular vision of an auteur director. However it could have been very different indeed.

Six years prior to this saw Ivan Reitman working on a version of Batman that would take the Caped Crusader seriously again after the psychedelic shenanigans of Adam West. Strangely, Reitman planned to do this by casting two up-and-coming comedians, Bill Murray and Eddie Murphy as Batman and Robin respectively. The pair would take on David Bowie as the Joker. On paper, it doesn't sound like the dark and gritty reboot we eventually get.

And yet, if you've seen Scrooged, you can imagine Bill Murray as a snarky version of billionaire playboy Bruce Wayne. The tortured orphan might be harder to imagine, but we've seen aspects of Murray's deeper side in later films like Lost in Translation and Broken Flowers so it's not a huge leap to see him tap into that as a young man. Perfectly honed martial artist and action hero though? Perhaps not. The proposed film was eventually dropped by the studio, and Reitman and Murray went on to make Ghostbusters.

As an aside, eventual Batman Michael Keaton later turned down Phil in Groundhog Day, a role that would eventually go to Murray.