Bill Murray is awesome on many levels. He’s absolutely hilarious, obviously, and over the years he’s proven himself to be more than just a comedian, he’s a genuinely good actor. So it seems like it would be almost unfair if he somehow came up with a way to make himself even more amazing, right? Because about the only thing that could make him any cooler would be if you combined him with, say, Batman.
Probably not a good idea to have your Batman be more of a clown than the Joker.
And that very thing almost happened when Tim Burton was making his 1989 version of everyone’s favorite brooding superhero. According to Murray himself, he was apparently in the running, though he also plays it off as something that wasn’t particularly serious. And that makes sense of course, considering that Murray has been in high demand for pretty much 30 solid years.
Still, it’s hard to imagine what a Bill Murray version of Batman would have been like, particularly when you take into account this was still the Pete Venkman-era Murray, long before he really gained respect as a serious, dramatic actor. Can you honestly imagine Bill Murray under the cowl, trying to sound intimidating? Hell, can you imagine Bill Murray ever being intimidating under any circumstances, Batman costume or no Batman costume?
This is one of those off the wall casting decisions that in retrospect seems completely bizarre and makes us thankful the filmmakers went in a different direction. You know, kind of like when Spielberg and Lucas decided against casting Shia LeBeouf in an Indiana Jones movie.
Shut up, it didn’t happen, and you’ll never convince me otherwise.
