Michael Keaton reveals reason why he didn’t star in 'Batman Forever'

Hollywood star Michael Keaton has explained why he did not return for Joel Schumacher's directorial venture, Batman Forever. The actor has previously played Bruce Wayne and his Caped Crusader alter-ego in Tim Burton's 1989 release, Batman, and 1992's release, Batman Returns. 

During a recent interview with In The Envelope: The Actor's Podcast via CBR, Keaton has explained the reason and talked about the creative differences as the director wanted to go a different route than what he and Burton had previously done in two Batman films.

Michael Keaton on not returning in Batman Forever

During his appearance on the podcast, Keaton went in-depth to explain why he did not feature in the Schumacher-directed film. He stated that he did not like leaning on the dark side of the character, Bruce Wayne, and instead, wanted to focus more on his superhero alter-ego, which did not go well with Keaton. And since they could not find a middle ground, the actor decided to walk away from the project. 

He explained, "It was always Bruce Wayne. It was never Batman. To me, I know the name of the movie is Batman, and it's hugely iconic and very cool and cultural iconic and because of Tim Burton, artistically iconic. I knew from the get-go it was Bruce Wayne. That was the secret. I never talked about it." People used to talk about Batman, but for the actor, it was all about Bruce Wayne.

"And then when the director who directed the third one (came on) I said, 'I just can’t do it.' And one of the reasons I couldn't do it was—and you know, he's a nice enough man, he's passed away, so I wouldn't speak ill of him even if he were alive—he, at one point, after more than a couple of meetings where I kept trying to rationalize doing it and hopefully talking him into saying I think we don’t want to go in this direction, I think we should go in this direction. And he wasn’t going to budge," Keaton added. 

Further, he talked about the conversation where the director could not 'understand why everything had to be so dark and so sad.' And then Keaton explained to him by saying, "Do you know how this guy got to be Batman? Have you read... I mean, it's pretty simple."

Well, this is not the first time that the actor talked about turning down the project. Earlier, in 2017, he opened up about what actually went down and had said that the film 'sucked' and that 'the script was never good.' As per a report by Screenrant, the actor had mentioned his issue with Schumacher's plot for the film.

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