Michael Keaton’s Batman 3 Idea Would’ve Killed Nolan’s Batman Begins

Michael Keaton never made a third Batman movie, but the actor’s original idea for Batman 3 would have made Nolan’s Batman Begins impossible. Despite the initial backlash, casting Michael Keaton as Batman proved to be as much of a right choice as it was an unusual one, to the point where moments like the “I’m Batman” line are still referenced to this day. Both Keaton and director Tim Burton would return for Batman Returns with the promise of not trying to replicate the first movie, which they fulfilled, but neither the director nor the actor ever came back for a third film.

While Tim Burton was interested in doing a third Batman movie, which reportedly would have been titled Batman Continues and would feature Marlon Wayans as Robin as well as the returns of Selina Kyle and Harvey Dent, the studio was having second thoughts following the negative impact Batman Returns had on licensed products, especially toys and fast foods. The Batman franchise had become too dark, and Warner Bros. decided to go with another director – Joel Schumacher. Michael Keaton had the opportunity to star in Batman Forever, but the actor and the director were not on the same page as to where the story would go.

In 2013, Michael Keaton revealed that during the time he was still having meetings for Batman 3, he wanted it to be a prequel origin story. Keaton was interested in seeing how Batman started, as well as having the opportunity to fix any mistakes they had made in the first two movies. Had Tim Burton and Michael Keaton made that idea work in a film that would likely be released in 1995, then yet another Batman origin story in 2005 as it was Batman Begins would have been hard to sell. Christopher Nolan’s pitch for reigniting the Batman franchise revolved around the never-told Batman origin story, including elements from a period of Bruce Wayne’s life that not even the comics had covered. The world created by Tim Burton was far more stylized than Nolan’s realism, but even still, a successful origin story told in Batman 3 would have made the entire concept behind Nolan’s reboot redundant – and thus, the Dark Knight trilogy would most likely never have happened.

Obviously, that is not the only thing that would have changed had Michael Keaton made a third Batman movie. With Keaton and Burton reunited for another installment, the not-so-soft reboot Batman Forever starring Val Kilmer would not have happened in 1995, meaning that there would be no Batman & Robin in 1997. The disastrous reception of the George Clooney Batman movie was the reason that Batman got stuck in limbo for years and the reason why Warner Bros. was open for pitches and scripts that could give the franchise a fresh start. Had that drastic change in tone between Returns and Forever never happened, then the darker take and the necessity of grounding Batman in reality – two key things in Nolan’s Batman Begins – might not have been what Warner Bros. would be looking for in a mid-2000s Batman franchise.

History could have gone in a lot of different ways regarding the Batman series, including a world in which Batman 3 with Michael Keaton happened and told an origin story. Instead, the origins of Tim Burton’s Batman remained a mystery, and Batman Forever moved the story forward. Ten years later, a Batman origin story would finally be told in Batman Begins, starting what would become one of the most successful superhero adaptations, the Dark Knight trilogy.