Michael Keaton: It took guts for Tim Burton to defend Batman casting amid uproar
Danny DeVito was among the star-studded audience members at the Hollywood Walk of Fame ceremony for the director.
Hollywood star Michael Keaton has praised director Tim Burton for standing by the decision to cast him in 1989 film Batman, despite a huge backlash at the time.
US actor Keaton was reunited with Burton on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on Tuesday, where the filmmaker received a star in recognition of his decades-long career in the film industry.
Burton’s directorial debut Pee-wee’s Big Adventure in 1985, starring the late Paul Reubens, was a hit and he went on to make comedy thriller Beetlejuice, starring Keaton in the title role alongside Winona Ryder and Catherine O’Hara.
The filmmaker next cast Keaton as superhero Batman, sparking controversy as Keaton was primarily known as a comedic actor at the time.
Addressing the Batman furore during the Walk of Fame ceremony, Keaton said: “He (Burton) hands me a script and says ‘Please read this and tell me what you think’. Now this is after Beetlejuice, after that performance, after that type of movie.
“And he says to the studio ‘I want that guy’ and I’ll never to this day understand why anyone even cared, but the uproar, you would have thought we were being invaded.
“It was unbelievable, the press went crazy, but he stuck by me, and the guts it took for him to make that decision will always be special to me.
“But also what that spawned. There are a lot of people making a lot of money out there with their superhero movies because of his choice and his vision of what those movies can be, because he changed everything.”
