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Speaker 1: This Day in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. Hello,

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Speaker 1: and Welcome to This Day in History Class, a show

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Speaker 1: that unmasks history one day at a time. I'm Gabelusier,

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Speaker 1: and in this episode, we're talking about a milestone in

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Speaker 1: pop culture history. A movie that changed the public's perception

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Speaker 1: of a well known character and turned comic book adaptations

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Speaker 1: into serious business. The day was June twenty third, nineteen

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Speaker 1: eighty nine, Tim Burton's Batman made its theatrical debut. One

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Speaker 1: of the world's first comic book superheroes, Batman was created

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Speaker 1: by artist Bob Kane and writer Bill Finger in nineteen

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Speaker 1: thirty nine. He went on to become one of the

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Speaker 1: most recognized and beloved characters in American pop culture, and

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Speaker 1: proved to be endlessly adaptable as well, changing style and

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Speaker 1: tone to mash the tastes of a given era. His

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Speaker 1: adventures took on a goofy, family friendly tone in the

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Speaker 1: nineteen sixties and seventies, but by the late nineteen eighties

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Speaker 1: it was time for the character to reinvent himself again,

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Speaker 1: this time as the star of a PG. Thirteen gothic

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Speaker 1: fantasy blockbuster. The nineteen eighty nine film starred Michael Keaton

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Speaker 1: as Bruce Wayne, a brooding billionaire philanthropist who became the

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Speaker 1: masked vigilante known as Batman after witnessing the murder of

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Speaker 1: his parents as a child. At the start of the film,

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Speaker 1: Batman is already an established crime fighter in Gotham City,

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Speaker 1: though his true identity remains a mystery to the public.

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Speaker 1: His role as Gotham's dark Night gets significantly harder following

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Speaker 1: a fateful encounter with mob henchman Jack Napier portrayed by

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Speaker 1: Jack Nicholson. During an early standoff with Batman, Napier falls

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Speaker 1: headfirst into a vat of chemicals and emerges physically disfigured

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Speaker 1: and mentally deranged. After killing his former boss, Napier, now

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Speaker 1: reborn as the Joker, goes on a rampage through Gotham City,

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Speaker 1: sewing panic among the populace and turning the city against

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Speaker 1: its own shadowy protector. Eventually, the Joker learns of Batman's

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Speaker 1: affection for newspaper reporter Vicky Vale played by Kim Basinger,

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Speaker 1: and uses her to lure his nemesis out into the

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Speaker 1: open for a final showdown. A live action Batman movie

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Speaker 1: may seem like a surefire hit today, but in the

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Speaker 1: nineteen eighties it was considered a huge financial risk. Comic

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Speaker 1: book adaptations were still rare in those days, and while

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Speaker 1: the first Superman movie had been a major hit in

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Speaker 1: the late nineteen seventies, its sequels grew increasingly silly. In

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Speaker 1: nineteen eighty seven, the Superman series fizzled out with its

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Speaker 1: fourth install, leading studios to conclude that audiences were no

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Speaker 1: longer interested in superheroes. The idea for a Batman movie

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Speaker 1: had already been kicked around for several years by that point,

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Speaker 1: but there were major concerns about the character's mainstream appeal.

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Speaker 1: That's because at the time, most people associated Batman with campy,

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Speaker 1: lighthearted fare, such as the nineteen sixties TV series starring

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Speaker 1: Adam West or Hannah Barbera's long running super Friend's cartoon.

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Speaker 1: Warner Brothers feared that adult audiences would assume a Batman

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Speaker 1: movie was just for kids, so to combat that perception,

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Speaker 1: they decided to move forward with a much darker, more

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Speaker 1: serious take on the character. That directive led to the

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Speaker 1: hiring of Tim Burton, an animator turned director who had

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Speaker 1: only helmed two films by that point. Nineteen eighty five's

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Speaker 1: Peewee's Big Adventure and nineteen eighty eight's Beetlejuice. Burton had

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Speaker 1: a hard time cracking the Batman character at Fave, believing

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Speaker 1: that any creative choice he made might garner unintentional laughs

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Speaker 1: from the audience. With that in mind, Burton began to

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Speaker 1: reimagine the movie as a story about Bruce Wayne rather

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Speaker 1: than Batman. The success of that approach would depend largely

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Speaker 1: on casting. The producers wanted to play it safe by

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Speaker 1: hiring a well known dramatic actor for the lead role.

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Speaker 1: They considered everyone from Mel Gibson and Kevin Costner to

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Speaker 1: Pierce Brosnan and Harrison Ford, but in the end they

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Speaker 1: decided to shake things up by casting Michael Keaton as

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Speaker 1: the lead. At the time, Keaton was best known for

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Speaker 1: comedic roles in movies like Mister Mom and Night Shift,

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Speaker 1: but Tim Burton, who had just worked with him on Beetlejuice,

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Speaker 1: was able to convince the studio to give the actor

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Speaker 1: a chance at a more serious role. They were quickly

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Speaker 1: won over once they got a look at Keaton in

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Speaker 1: costume consisting of all black body armor accented by a

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Speaker 1: yellow bat symbol and utility belt. Heaton's batsuit was a

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Speaker 1: far cry from the blue and gray spandex worn by

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Speaker 1: Adam West. The design perfectly captured the more serious, grounded

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Speaker 1: tone the studio was looking for, and it became the

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Speaker 1: template for how Batman would be portrayed on screen from

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Speaker 1: then on. The Casting of the film's main antagonist was

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Speaker 1: a much easier process. Early on, executive producer Michael Uslin

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Speaker 1: chose Jack Nicholson to play the Joker based on the

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Speaker 1: actor's unhinged performance in Stanley Kubrick's The Shining. It wasn't

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Speaker 1: cheap to get the big name star on board, reportedly

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Speaker 1: costing six million dollars plus a hefty cut of the

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Speaker 1: box office, but most fans would agree it was money

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Speaker 1: well spent. Tim Burton's Batman broke new ground in terms

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Speaker 1: of casting and costumes, but it also revolutionized the way

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Speaker 1: Hollywood marketed and merchandised its summer blockbusters. Long before the

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Speaker 1: film hit theaters, the studio began touting it as not

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Speaker 1: just another movie, but a major summer event. A key

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Speaker 1: feature of the early marketing campaign was an evocative movie

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Speaker 1: poster that spotlighted the black and gold Batman logo. Against

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Speaker 1: an all black background. In an especially bold move, one

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Speaker 1: version of the poster didn't even mention the cast or

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Speaker 1: the title, showing nothing but the iconic symbol and the

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Speaker 1: release date June twenty third. That bare bones poster proved

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Speaker 1: so popular that some people actually started stealing copies from

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Speaker 1: their local bus stops. Warner Brothers' efforts to build hype

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Speaker 1: for the movie were clearly working, but the studio didn't

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Speaker 1: stop at posters and trailers. An unprecedented amount of Batman

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Speaker 1: merchandise flooded store shelves prior to the film's debut, eventually

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Speaker 1: racking up more than one point five billion dollars in sales.

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Speaker 1: As the release date neared, Warner Brothers decided to break

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Speaker 1: the mold in one other way as well. They held

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Speaker 1: nationwides sneak preview screenings on the evening prior to the

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Speaker 1: film's release. Batman was the first movie to cater to

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Speaker 1: fans with early screenings, and the model proved so successful

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Speaker 1: that it since become a common industry practice. The box

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Speaker 1: office numbers for Batman was another game changer for Hollywood.

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Speaker 1: The film grossed more than forty million dollars in its

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Speaker 1: opening weekend, breaking the record set by Ghostbusters two one

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Speaker 1: week earlier by well over ten million dollars. Batman also

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Speaker 1: became the first film to ever hit one hundred million

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Speaker 1: dollars in ten days, and by the end of its

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Speaker 1: theatrical run it had earned a total of two hundred

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Speaker 1: and fifty one million dollars in North America alone. That

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Speaker 1: made it the highest grossing movie of nineteen eighty nine,

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Speaker 1: as well as Warner Brothers biggest hit in the history

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Speaker 1: of the studio up to that point. The film also

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Speaker 1: received mostly positive reviews, with The Washington Post calling it

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Speaker 1: quote dark, haunting and poetic, a mag magnificent living comic book.

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Speaker 1: Plenty of critics praised Jack Nicholson's scenery chewing performance as

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Speaker 1: the Joker as well, but even the ones who weren't

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Speaker 1: blown away by the acting or the plot found much

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Speaker 1: to admire in the film's moody gothic setting. For example,

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Speaker 1: Roger Ebert hailed the movie as quote a triumph of

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Speaker 1: design over story. And speaking of design, it was British

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Speaker 1: production designer Anton First who delivered Batman's only Oscar nomination

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Speaker 1: and win for his art, direction and set decoration. Not

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Speaker 1: only did he and his team transform the back lood

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Speaker 1: of London's Pinewood Studios into a Gotham city ripped straight

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Speaker 1: out of the comics. They also created one of the

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Speaker 1: most memorable versions of the Batmobile in the entire franchise history,

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Speaker 1: and since Batman's car has seen a dizzying number of

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Speaker 1: redesigns in its eighty plus years on the road, that's

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Speaker 1: really saying something. The film's colossal success revived interest in

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Speaker 1: the Caped Crusader, both on screen and off, and just

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Speaker 1: three years later it was followed up with a sequel,

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Speaker 1: Batman Returns. Michael Keaton and Tim Burton both returned themselves

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Speaker 1: for the second film and considered coming back for a third. However,

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Speaker 1: Warner Brothers had faced backlash from parents over the sequel's

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Speaker 1: darker tone and insisted on a more kid friendly approach

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Speaker 1: for the next film. That led Keaton and Burton to

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Speaker 1: leave the project, as neither was interested in taking the

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Speaker 1: character in a lighter direction, after all, they'd been hired

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Speaker 1: to do just the opposite a few years earlier. The

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Speaker 1: franchise carried on with two more installments, directed by Joel Schumacher,

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Speaker 1: both of which were drastically different in tone. Compared to

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Speaker 1: their predecessors. Since then, the Batman film series has been

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Speaker 1: rebooted multiple times, with a variety of different actors and

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Speaker 1: directors offering their own unique takes on the timeless character.

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Speaker 1: There is some good news for fans of Keaton's Batman, though,

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Speaker 1: as the actor actually donned his cape and cowl once

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Speaker 1: again for the twenty twenty three film The Flash. It's

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Speaker 1: not as straightforward a story as the Burton films and

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Speaker 1: involves a good deal of comic book lore and time

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Speaker 1: travel hijinks. But if you want to catch up with

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Speaker 1: your favorite Batman thirty years later, this is your chance, provided,

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Speaker 1: of course, that you're willing to get a little nuts.

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Speaker 1: I'm Gabe Lucier and hopefully you now know a little

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Speaker 1: more about history today than you did yesterday. You can

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Speaker 1: learn even more about history by following us on Twitter, Facebook,

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Speaker 1: and Instagram at TDI HC Show, and if you have

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Speaker 1: any comments or suggestions, you can always send him my

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Speaker 1: way by writing to this day at iHeartMedia dot com.

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Speaker 1: Thanks to Chandler Mays and Ben Hackett for producing the show,

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Speaker 1: and thank you for listening. I'll see you back here

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Speaker 1: again soon for another day in History. Class to depended

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Speaker 1: the interptan the U