Trivia for
Batman (1989) More at IMDbPro »

• The first draft of this movie was written in 1980 by Superman (1978) co-writer Tom Mankiewicz and told the story of Batman's and Robin's origins. The villains were The Joker and The Penguin, and Rupert Thorne and Barbara Gordon were also to appear. At the end Robin was to appear in costume (much like Batman Forever (1995)). It was going to be released in 1985 with a budget of $20 million, but with producers Michael E. Uslan and Benjamin Melniker booted off the production, the project was shelved until Jon Peters and Peter Guber picked it up. In 1985, after the surprise success of Pee-wee's Big Adventure (1985), the studio offered the job to Tim Burton. Unsatisfied with the Mankiewicz script, Burton and his then girlfriend Julie Hickson wrote a 30-page treatment of the project. This treatment was approved by both the producers and studio. In 1986 Burton met Sam Hamm, who had just received a two-year contract with Warner Brothers, and gave him the job of writing a screenplay based on Burton's and Hickson's treatment. However, the writing process stretched too long and Hamm couldn't write further drafts of the script because of the writers strike. In his place, Burton got Beetle Juice (1988) co-writer Warren Skaaren to continue writing. Nearly three years after working on the project Burton didn't get the film green-lit until the box-office result of Beetle Juice (1988). Batman (1989) began filming in October and it only took 12 weeks to shoot.
  
  
• When the Tom Mankiewicz script was in development, the directors associated with the project included Joe Dante and Ivan Reitman. Producers wanted an unknown to play Batman and the cast wish-list included William Holden as Commissioner Gordon and David Niven as Alfred, Bruce Wayne's faithful butler.
  
  
• Michael Keaton casting as Bruce Wayne/Batman caused a controversy amongst comic book fans, with 50,000 protest letters sent to Warner Bros. offices. Bob Kane, Sam Hamm and Michael E. Uslan also heavily questioned the casting.
  
  
• Alec Baldwin, Jeff Bridges, Emilio Estevez, Matthew Broderick, Kevin Costner, Tom Cruise, Michael J. Fox, Harrison Ford, Robert Downey Jr., Kevin Spacey, Patrick Swayze, Dennis Quaid, Kurt Russell, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Charlie Sheen, Bill Murray, Pierce Brosnan, Tom Selleck, Daniel Day-Lewis, Tom Hanks and Bruce Willis were considered for the role of Bruce Wayne/Batman.
  
  
• Sean Young was originally cast as Vicki Vale, but broke her collarbone while filming a horse-riding scene with Michael Keaton. The scene was subsequently written out of the script. Tim Burton suggested replacing Young with Michelle Pfeiffer but Keaton, who was in a relationship with Pfeiffer, believed it would be too awkward. She went on to portray Catwoman in Batman Returns (1992). Jon Peters suggested Kim Basinger and she was cast.
  
  
• Rosanna Arquette, Ellen Barkin, Robin Duke, Kate Capshaw, Glenn Close, Joan Cusack, Geena Davis, Judy Davis, Denny Dillon, Christine Ebersole, Mia Farrow, Carrie Fisher, Bridget Fonda, Jodie Foster, Teri Garr, Melanie Griffith, Linda Hamilton, Daryl Hannah, Goldie Hawn, Mariel Hemingway Barbara Hershey, Holly Hunter, Anjelica Huston, Amy Irving, Diane Keaton, Diane Lane, Kay Lenz, Jessica Lange, Lori Loughlin, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Virginia Madsen, Kelly McGillis, Bette Midler, Catherine O'Hara, Tatum O'Neal, Sarah Jessica Parker, Michelle Pfeiffer, Molly Ringwald, Meg Ryan, Susan Sarandon, Jane Seymour, Cybill Shepherd, Brooke Shields, Sissy Spacek, Mary Steenburgen, Sharon Stone, Meryl Streep, Lea Thompson, Kathleen Turner, Sela Ward, Sigourney Weaver and Debra Winger were all considered for the role of Vicki Vale after Sean Young, the original choice, departed.
  
  
• Robin Williams was considered for the role of The Joker; he would later be considered for The Riddler as well. Jack Nicholson got the role of The Joker but demanded top-billing and a lucrative deal that gave him royalties on all merchandise.
  
  
• Willem Dafoe, David Bowie, John Lithgow, Tim Curry, and James Woods, were considered for The Joker.
  
  
• As a fan of Michael Gough's work in various "Hammer" Horror films, Tim Burton cast Gough as Alfred Pennyworth.
  
  
• Billy Dee Williams took the role of Harvey Dent with the expectation that he would be brought back to play Two-Face and reportedly had a contract clause added reserving the role for him. During casting for Batman Forever (1995) Warner Bros. decided they would prefer Tommy Lee Jones and bought out Williams' contract.
  
  
• Jack Nicholson convinced the filmmakers to cast Tracey Walter as Bob the Goon. In real life, Nicholson and Walter are close friends.
  
  
• Tim Burton hired Danny Elfman to compose the music score. Initially, Jon Peters was skeptical of hiring Elfman, but was later convinced when he heard the opening number.
  
  
• In order to combat negative rumors about the production, a theatrical trailer was hastily assembled to be distributed to theaters. To test its effectiveness, Warner Bros. executives showed it at a theater in Westwood, California to an unsuspecting audience. The ninety-second trailer received a standing ovation. Later, it would become a popular bootleg at comic book conventions, and theater owners would report patrons paying full price for movie tickets just to have an opportunity to see the trailer, and leaving before the feature began.
  
  
• This movie was released the year of Batman's 50th birthday.
  
  
• Michael Jackson was asked to write and perform the songs for the movie, but he had to turn it down due to his concert commitments.
  
  
• Jack Nicholson received a percentage of the gross on the film, and due to its massive box-office took home around $60 million. As of 2003 it is still the single-movie record for actor's salary.
  
  
• The flag of Gotham City closely resembles the state flag of Indiana. It can be seen briefly in Harvey Dent's office.
  
  
• In the original script, the paper Knox and Vicki worked for was the Gotham Gazette, not the Gotham Globe.
  
  
• The original script featured a bitter rivalry between Bruce Wayne and Knox over Vicki.
  
  
• In the original script, Bruce Wayne was described as a man with "muscles on top of muscles and scarred from nightly combat".
  
  
• When Alfred receives Vicki Vale's message a portrait of Thomas Wayne can be seen in the background.
  
  
• It has been reported that Tim Burton had an uncredited cameo as one of The Joker's goons in the Museum scene.
  
  
• In the original script with Robin included, the Flying Graysons (John, Mary, and Dick) are introduced at the parade scene. The Joker shoots the trapeze artists sending John and Mary to their deaths and leaving Dick to survive. Dick later becomes Robin in full costume at the end. The special edition version of the DVD release of Batman (1989) features an animated storyboard sequence of this scene, where Dick Grayson was voiced by Jason Hillhouse, and Batman and the Joker were voiced by Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill respectively.
  
  
• For its first video release, the film was graded slightly lighter as cinema audiences had complained that it was filmed so darkly that they could hardly see what was going on.
  
  
• Anton Furst's designs for Gotham City were incorporated into the comics during the early '90s. The design was removed during the "No Man's Land" arc.
  
  
• In a newsroom scene, Vicki Vale and Alexander Knox examine a map of Gotham City which has been marked with Batman sightings. The map is actually a map of Vancouver, British Columbia.
  
  
• The Batmobile was built on the chassis of a Chevy Impala.
  
  
• Corto Maltese is also an island country in Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns, one of Tim Burton's inspirations for Batman.
  
  
• The design of Gotham City is based on the work of architects Antoni Gaudi, Otto Wagner, Shia Takamatsu and Louis H. Sullivan.
  
  
• The painting that the Joker spares during his vandalism spree is Francis Bacon's "Figure with Meat."
  
  
• During filming, a young Tim Burton was having trouble shooting a scene with Jack Palance. An irritated Palance asked Burton, "I've made more than a hundred films, how many have you made?" Burton said, years later, that it was a "whiteout" experience he would never forget.
  
  
• When the production design team arrived at Pinewood Studios in England to build the sets, they discovered the atmosphere processor set from Aliens (1986) in one of the sound stages, with most of the Aliens' nest and eggs still intact.
  
  
• The handwriting on the note that accompanies the gas mask in the museum is that of director Tim Burton.
  
  
• Although this film played a large part in creating the '12' certificate for UK Cinema releases, the BBFC chose not to use it for video releases until 1994. Therefore, when this film was released to video in 1990, the certificate was upgraded to '15'. It has remained unchanged ever since. See also: Batman Returns (1992).
  
  
• The face of the Joker was initially inspired to Bob Kane and Bill Finger by Conrad Veidt as The Man Who Laughs (1928).
  
  
• The Joker's line "Take thy beak from out my heart" (said at Vale's apartment) is from Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven". The full line is 'Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!' (the "beak" being of the raven)
  
  
• The theatrical trailer for Batman includes not only sequences presented without music, but there are also some alternate takes used in the trailer that were not used in the movie. Specifically: (1) The Joker shoots his television after saying "I have given a name to my pain." Nicholson loads his gun while speaking this line - in the film, he reveals the gun after speaking the line, and the explosion is also a different take. A wide shot was used in the finished film, but in the trailer, a close-up is used for Nicholson's line. (2) Michael Keaton's line "My life is really...complex" is shown here as a close-up which is a different take than the one used in the film. Additionally, in the movie, the take used is from a different camera position. (3) Robert Wuhl is seen asking the question, "Lieutenant, is there a six foot bat in Gotham City?" In the movie, a different take was used, with different things occurring in the background. Regarding this trailer, on the special edition DVD, Warner Bros. has removed the final screen card which originally indicated the film's release date in North America: June 23 (1989).
  
  
• Jack Nicholson said of his role, "The thing I like about The Joker is that his sense of humor is completely tasteless."
  
  
• In Sam Hamm's original script, the first time we see Smylex's effect (called Smylenol in the script) is on the two female models, who are only represented as cardboard cut-outs in Joker's commercial. The original scene has them in a bikini photo session with a photographer who is urging them to smile more as he snaps away. The girls begin to giggle, which at first pleases the photographer, then their giggles become laughter, then uncontrollable helpless hysterics, which has the photographer going from mild annoyance to complete horror as the exhausted girls expire from forced hilarity, with the ghastly Joker-like grins frozen on their faces. As it was originally intended, the death scene is much more protracted than the one with the female newscaster, depicting death by Smylex as a particularly agonizing, if mirthful, way to go.
  
  
• David Cronenberg was offered a chance to direct but declined.
  
  
• The only two actors to appear in all four Burton/Schumacher films are Pat Hingle (Commissioner Gordon) and Michael Gough (Alfred.)
  
  
• Adam West, who played Batman in the TV show "Batman" (1966), admitted that he was disappointed that he was not asked to reprise the role in the movie. Also, in his 1994 autobiography, he stated that, despite belief to the contrary, he was never asked to make a cameo appearance as Thomas Wayne, adding that he would have declined the role if it were offered to him.
  
  
• The real name of the Joker in this movie (Jack Napier) is a reference to the actor Alan Napier, who played Alfred in the TV show "Batman" (1966).
  
  
• The lines "What a dick" (muttered after the newspaper artist shows Knox his rendering of Batman) and "He must've been King of the Wicker People" were ad-libbed by Robert Wuhl.
  
  
• On The Joker's desk in his lair is a rare Rubik Diamond puzzle in an unsolved state being used as a paperweight.
  
  
• The first Batman movie to win an Academy Award. It was followed by The Dark Knight (2008) with two wins.
  
  
• Paul Birchard, who has a minor role in this movie, would also have a tiny role in The Dark Knight (2008).
  
  
• Lt. Eckhardt's surname was not new to the Batman universe; in the original Detective Comics, the name of Harvey Dent/Two-Face's (failed) plastic surgeon was Dr. Eckhart.
  
  
• In an interview with About.com, Christopher Nolan (director of Batman Begins (2005) and The Dark Knight (2008)) described this film as "...a brilliant film, visionary and extraordinarily idiosyncratic...".
  
  
• The surgical tools used to "reconstruct" the Joker's face are the same props as the dental tools used by Steve Martin on Bill Murray in Little Shop of Horrors (1986). Ironically, Jack Nicholson appeared in Murray's role in the original The Little Shop of Horrors (1960).
  
  

• SPOILER: In the film Jack Napier, The Joker, is the murderer of Batman's parents. One of the facts not addressed in the film that has its roots in the comic is that Batman would dream whichever villain he was chasing at the time was the one who murdered his parents.
  
  
• SPOILER: The character of Alexander Knox (Robert Wuhl) was a character created for the movie. In the script the character was killed during the parade scene. In an interview with Starlog Magazine done at the time, Wuhl joked that his character should become Robin in the sequel.
  
  
• SPOILER: A scene was cut from the parade sequence where the crowd discovered that all the money that the Joker was handing out was counterfeit. In a follow-up to the Joker's earlier line that he wanted "My face on the one-dollar bill," all the dollar bills that were thrown to the crowd had the Joker's picture in place of George Washington's.
  
  
• SPOILER: On-screen body count: 56
  
  
• SPOILER: A publicity shot cut from the film, but used in the "Batman" Fall 1989 trading cards is of Joker's first and final confrontation with Carl Grissom. The subheading read, "No deals this time, Grissom."
  
  

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