While Burton’s Batman from 1989 created a new wave of comic book movie interest, he isn’t in a place where he sees himself doing another one.
While Marvel Studios was able to get OG Spider-Man director Sam Raimi to return to superhero movies with the official MCU entry Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, it would not be as easy a task for any studio to convince Tim Burton to return to that world. While directors like Richard Donner found great success in the past by adapting Superman for the big screen, Burton’s 1989 film Batman would define the modern comic book film by writing a new blueprint for stylized visuals in superhero movies. Michael Keaton recently gave Burton that trailblazing recognition when he said, “Tim deserves enormous credit. He changed everything. I can’t necessarily say this, but there’s a strong possibility there is no Marvel Universe, there is no DC Universe, without Tim Burton. He was doubted and questioned.”
Now that Burton is making his big revisit to the afterlife with the sequel Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, Variety asked Burton in an interview if he would be interested in doing another superhero film. Burton answered,
At the moment, I would say no. I come at things from different points of view, so I would never say never to anything. But, at the moment, it’s not something I’d be interested in.”
While Batman was a major cultural phenomenon in 1989, with Bat-mania being everywhere you looked, Burton explained that even with Warner Bros. somewhat looking over his shoulder during the production, he was still given certain creative freedoms, especially when filming out of the country. Burton expounded, “I was lucky because at that time, the word ‘franchise’ didn’t exist. Batman’ felt slightly experimental at the time. … It deviated from what the perception [of a superhero movie] might be. So you didn’t hear that kind of studio feedback, and being in England, it was even further removed. We really just got to focus on the film and not really think about those things that now they think about even before you do it.”
He also said 1992’s Batman Returns was the first time he could feel the studio’s protection of a franchise, “I got reenergized by the whole thing. And that was when we started hearing the word franchise and where the studio started going, ‘What’s the black stuff coming out of the Penguin’s mouth?’ It was the first time the cold wind of that kind of thing came upon me.”
Certainly, his interest in comic book films had died after the heartbreaking loss of his canceled Nicolas Cage Superman Lives movie. Burton reflects, “There’s always this ‘Jason and the Argonauts’-style journey that everyone goes through to get a movie made. I’ve worked on a couple movies that didn’t happen after working for years on them, and those are quite traumatic. I just try to focus on things that I feel strongly about and get rid of all the noise surrounding them.”