Batman:The Musical?

Years before Spider-Man:Turn Off The Dark we almost got another big budget superhero musical on Broadway. Batman was announced in 1998 with an expected 2001 release to be penned by Bat Out of Hell writer Jim Steinman and directed by Tim Burton. Unfortunately the project was delayed again and again until it was officially cancelled after the release of Batman Begins

The plot as a whole is unknown but Steinman's description of two songs on his blog can give us hints of it. It was to be very similar to the two Burton movies, dark, and melodramatic.

"
In CATWOMAN: Selena Kyle, aka Catwoman secretly, was A WITNESS to the murder of Bruce Wayne's parents. A street urchin who happened to see it all, hidden away. The brutal murders haunt both Bruce and Selena. But both respond totally differently to their traumatic bruising. Bruce learns to vow REVENGE and becomes the avenging knight, BATMAN. But Selena is mostly mentally scarred by realizing how easily things that are precious can be taken from you. (Mrs. Wayne's pearl necklace is ripped from her throat.) So Selena grows up, CRAVING precious jewels, & obessed with HOLDING ONTO THEM! (She never wears them outside, shes a plain mousy woman, but she hoards them in chests.) Only when she transforms into CATWOMAN are her love of danger & lust for precious jewels & “crime” what dominates her. Its the secret total possession of them that drives her, not the public display.
So both "witnesses" to the crime of the Wayne's horrific murder by Joker has mutated two little "observers": Bruce became Batman, Selena became CATWOMAN. Two little "lost" children have mutated thru their own complex reactions to a numbing loss, and in fact fall in love, with a dark, somewhat "kinky" S&M like undertow.This is new to the Batman world.

Catwoman sings her song alone in a jewelry store, an orgiastic revel in the glinting glittering jewels, piled up around her. She smashes glass cases and dances as erotically as Salome with the severed head of John the Baptist. I think you'll recognize my best use of the "chorus" here": "I NEED ALL THE LOVE I CAN GET AND I NEED ALL THE LOVE THAT I CANT GET TO(O)"

Then, at the end of BATMAN, under the fiery ruins of an elevated train & track, fighting ferociously with Joker, Catwoman & Batman unite. And in the battle, Catwoman is mortally wounded, "saving" Batman's life heroically. In a climactic elegiac song, BATMAN, holding the dying Catwoman in his arms, sings "We're Still The Children We Once Were", along with the expiring Catwoman, AND with THEMSELVES as the little kids who saw the murder. It forms a hopefully thrilling, tragic quartet: Bruce as an orphan, Selena as a terrified urchin, BATMAN, as a heartshattered avenger, and CATWOMAN as a dying doomed hero. A spine tingling quartet. Batmans final act of gruesome revenge still awaits. But this is the operatic finale."


So, lets say Steinman and Warner go through with this and it gets a 2000, 2001, or 2002 release. Would it fare any better then Spider-Man? Would it effect the Batman franchise? Would audiences find the idea hard to take seriously after the disaster of Batman and Robin?


More resources here:

http://www.freewebs.com/batman_themusical/home.htm


Song demos and fan interpretations:






https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99gjG2BU_f8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmB9c73Fif0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nR6T3ty06NE
 
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