Tim Burton pioneered comic book blockbusters early in his career, directing Michael Keaton in both Warner Bros.’ Batman and Batman Returns, but the filmmaker says he’s not interested in returning to superhero movies in today’s industry, where there’s a focus on long-term continuity and cinematic universes.
“At this point, I would say no,” Burton told Variety in a new interview. “I look at things from different perspectives, so I never say no to anything, but at this point, it’s not something I’m interested in.”
The filmmaker, who is promoting his upcoming sequel, “Beetlejuice: The Next Generation,” said that when “Batman” was made in Britain in 1988, he was given a certain amount of creative freedom and relatively low-key studio oversight.
“I was lucky because the word ‘franchise’ didn’t exist back then,” Burton says. “Batman felt a little bit experimental at the time. … It was [of a superhero movie] “Maybe so. So we didn’t hear any of that kind of studio feedback and being in England it was even more distant. We really had to focus on the film and not think too much about the sort of pre-shooting stuff that they think about now.”
Burton also said that he wasn’t initially that interested in a sequel to the original Batman, but was drawn to the villains Penguin and Catwoman, which changed his mind. Burton and Keaton reunited in 1992’s Batman Returns, which starred Danny DeVito and Michelle Pfeiffer as the iconic comic book villains, but neither Burton nor Keaton appeared in the Warner Bros. sequel, Batman Forever, which saw Joel Schumacher take over as director and Val Kilmer play Gotham’s caped warrior.
“I was reinvigorated by all of this,” Burton says, “and then when I started hearing about the franchise, studios started saying, ‘What’s that black thing coming out of the Penguin’s mouth?’ For me, that was the first time the cold winds of that stuff blew.”
Aside from the Batman series, Burton also once planned a Superman movie starring Nicolas Cage, a project that never came to fruition, but last year’s DC Comics film The Flash paid homage to the project by featuring a CGI version of Cage battling a giant spider in a multiverse-crossing sequence.
Reflecting on the failed Superman movie, Burton said, “Everybody has to go through the Jason and the Argonaut journey to get a movie made. I’ve done a few movies that I worked on for years and they never came to fruition, and that’s pretty traumatic. I try to focus on what I feel strongly about and remove all the noise that surrounds it.”
Burton’s 20th feature film, Beetlejuice, hits theaters on September 6th.