Bill Murray Reveals Why He and Eddie Murphy Passed on Playing Batman and Robin

It’s by now an infamous Hollywood story that Bill Murray and Eddie Murphy were Ghostbusters director Ivan Reitman’s choice for a comedic take on Batman and Robin – only the two stars couldn’t agree on which one of them would play Batman: “I talked to Eddie Murphy about it, and Eddie wanted to play Batman,” Murray told Yahoo’s Never-Weres. “That’s as far as that conversation went.” With that, Murray is providing deeper insight into one of the more interesting anecdotes about what The Batman franchise could’ve been. 

In Bill Murray’s longer answer about what happened to him and Eddie Murphy’s Batman and Robin movie, the iconic actor explains (jokes?) that Eddie Murphy’s push to play Batman left Murray with a choice he simply could not abide by: playing Robin. 

“I don’t wanna be the Boy Wonder to anybody,” Murray said. “Maybe much earlier when I was a boy. But it was too late for that by the ’80s. Also, I couldn’t do the outfit. Eddie looks good in purple, and I look good in purple. In red and green, I look like one of Santa’s elves. There was just a lot of vanity involved in the production. It wasn’t gonna happen.”

Ultimately, the Batman movie that Reitman was going to make evolved into Tim Burton’s Batman (1989) – a movie that forever changed the Batman character and franchise. Burton’s Goth-themed vision of Batman set an entirely new aesthetic for the character, with his black body armored Batsuit and gun-mounted Batmobile. Indeed, Burton’s new vision was such a big success that fans went on to pretty much only accept the “darker” version of Batman from there on out. 

It boggles the mind to think about what would’ve happened to the Batman franchise at the pivotal point of Batman ’89 if it had instead been Ivan Reitman’s comedic version of Batman that took root instead. Would Batman have still been the box office cash-cow he became? Bill Murray and Eddie Murphy were two of the biggest comedic actors of the time, so it’s entirely possible! If that film had been a hit, would the future Batman movies have continued in the comedic vein? Crazy…

Murray’s account is just one more piece of evidence that the story of the different actors who almost played Batman is a long and strange one. It begs the question: has anyone done the definitive book on that subject yet? It would be a great read.

Source: Yahoo Entertainment