Tim Burton has explained why he’s not interested in making another superhero movie.
The 65-year-old director, who is set to release the highly anticipated film “Beetlejuice” starring Michael Keaton and Jenna Ortega this September, directed both “Batman” (1989) and “Batman Returns” (1992) early in his career but hasn’t made a superhero movie since.
In a new interview with Variety , the filmmaker explained why he has no interest in returning to the genre: “I approach things from a variety of angles, so I’d never say no to anything, but at the moment, it’s not something I’m interested in.”
The Edward Scissorhands director added: “I was lucky because the word ‘franchise’ didn’t exist back then. Batman felt a bit experimental at the time… It was [of a superhero movie] That may be so.”
Burton said he accepted the role in the 1992 Batman sequel, “Batman Returns,” because he was “invigorated” by its villains, the Penguin (Danny DeVito) and Catwoman (Michelle Pfeiffer), but he soon abandoned the sequel after the first signs of interference from the studio.
“That’s when we started hearing about franchises,” he says, “and studios started saying, ‘What’s that black thing coming out of the Penguin’s mouth?’ That was my first exposure to the cold winds of that stuff.”
Michael Keaton on the set of Tim Burton’s Batman. Credit: Getty/Photo by Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty Images
Alongside Batman, Burton was also in negotiations to make a Superman film starring Nicolas Cage, which never materialized, but The Flash alluded to the project by featuring a CGI version of Cage as Steel Man.
Reflecting on the canceled project, Burton said, “There were a few films that I’d worked on for years that never got made, and that was really traumatic. I tried to focus on something that I felt strongly about and remove all the noise surrounding it.”
Burton’s Beetlejuice, which also stars Winona Ryder and Catherine O’Hara in their original roles, hits theaters on September 6.