True Story Of The Best Batman Movies Never Made

9. 1983 - The Batman

When the studios wouldn't budge on their perception of Batman, Uslan took another approach, forming BatFilm Productions and buying the film rights himself. An inspired move in hindsight, but a risk at the time.

With everything set to go, the new studio commissioned James Bond and Superman writer Tony Mankiewicz to write the first official screenplay titled The Batman in 1983. His agenda was simple - he was to marry the poppy successes of Superman and the more realistic, darker elements of Bond.

His answer was to turn to the comics, relying specifically on Batman: Strange Apparitions. The film was announced in late 1983 with mid-1985 as the release date and a budget of $20m. Batman would have been played by an unknown, It would have brought in Rupert Thorne as a villain, as well as The Joker and Mankiewicz wrote in love interest Silver St. Cloud and built Robin's origin into the plot. The rest of the cast would be made up of David Niven as Alfred, William Holden as Jim Gordon, and best of all David Bowie as The Joker. Peter O'Toole was suggested to play the Penguin - a mobster with a low body temperature and Eddie Murphy and Michael J Fox were both suggested for Robin.

After the success of Ghostbusters, Ivan Reitman was attached as director, and expressed his desire to bring in Bill Murray with him to portray Batman. It would have been bold, but it's hard to argue that it would have been any stranger than Burton casting Michael Keaton.

The script had issues and unfortunately Reitman left as it underwent nine rewrites from nine separate writers, which completely reinvented the entire project. Joe Dante was briefly attached as his replacement, but it all died on its knees before Uslan turned to another director hot off his debut movie - Tim Burton.