How ‘Ghostbusters’ Director Ivan Reitman Almost Made A Bill Murray ‘Batman’ Movie – www.cracked.com

But, pretty soon, Batman wins over the Police Department and becomes far more social than the taciturn caped crusaders we’re used to. This Batman has no problems speaking at public events or even accepting the keys to the city. 

Over the course of his Bat-adventures, Bruce meets the Joker, the Penguin, secret crime boss Rupert Thorn, and, almost as an afterthought, Robin — who could have been played by Eddie Murphy, in the unlikely case that he accepted the tiny part.  

Things get darker towards the end when Thorne injures (or, in the first draft, kills) Bruce’s girlfriend, and Bruce kills him. But even that gruesome death scene is told in a pretty freaking Looney Tunes way: Batman stabs Thorne with a giant thumbtack and throws him into a massive pencil sharpener. 

This script is like a middle point between Adam West and Michael Keaton’s Batmen: silly, but also violent and frequently weird. Despite the dark parts, which probably would have been rewritten anyway, it’s not that hard to imagine Reitman and Murray pulling it off — if they could finance a movie about a group of nerds who hunt ghosts (which occasionally give living people BJs for some reason), literally anything is possible. 

Follow Maxwell Yezpitelok‘s heroic effort to read and comment on every ’90s Superman comic at Superman86to99.tumblr.com.  

Top image: Columbia Pictures, Warner Bros. 

Related: ‘Ghostbusters’ Director Ivan Reitman’s First Movie Was Raided By The Cops