I just learned this piece of film history. In the 70's producers Benjamin Melniker and Michael E. Uslan a comic book enthusiast purchased the rights for Batman, at the time the character was mostly well known for the 60's TV series and was not taken seriously. Uslan was unsuccessful with pitching Batman to various movie studios because they wanted the film to be similar to the campy 1960s TV series. It wasn't after the succes of Superman that Warner Bros the studio behind it decided to make a serious Batman film. Warner Bros then chose Tim Burton as director, who at the time was a relative unknown. Most of the story treatments would often follow the nature of the Adam West series, and was given a relative low budget, due to no one having faith in the project.
That is until Tim Burton's other project, Beetlejuice took off and was a hit, this was an unexpected turn that led to Batman being fully greenlit and given a real budget. All the previous scripts were thrown out and instead Tim Burton after being given creative freedom went for a more dark and serious adaptation of the 1939 comic.
Batman was a massive success and changed the game forever. Comic book movies were taken more seriously.
The success of the merchandise of this movie led to the company that had the rights for the movie gain license from marvel to also produce X-Men toys, they would later go on to acquire Marvel entertainment who at the time was in Bankruptcy. The new company became Marvel Enterprises. They would later separate and Marvel Enterprises changed its name again to Marvel Entertainment, which would go on the create the MCU.
This chain of events wouldn't have been possible if Tim Burton hadn't decided to make Beetlejuice
Submitted April 22, 2020 at 05:01AM by 1997wickedboy https://ift.tt/2XUmcRS
