WI: 1960s Batman not Cancelled

bonus points if someone can come up with a way for it to STILL be on in 2012. Maybe it'd get darker and edgier starting in the 80s, turn into a camp fest agian in the 1990s, and go back to a dark edgy Dark Knight-esque show in the 2000s and 2010s.

It'd have to be, given Adam West would be 80 years old. It'd be Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy.
 
maybe they swap out actors like doctor who.

I don't know if you could do that. The concept of Batman pulling a "Bonanza" and running for eons is an interesting one, and frankly one that I'd like to see discussed, but I don't know if it's possible...at least with Batman the way it was. West and Ward made it theirs and are so indelibly Batman and Robin in that show. And I think it's hard to remove them from it on the basis of what that show was. Batman was not a drama, and I think a drama is somewhere where it's easier to swap people in and out. Batman was "theatre of the absurd" as Adam West puts it. Its campy and playing up the comic book and the wackiness of it as only West and Ward could do. So I don't really see the ability to remove them. At least not Batman. Ward could go off and the Robin's could be replaced like Shemps, but West is that Batman.

But, to the previous point, maybe if the Batman show played it straight then that could be possible. An idea struck me of maybe if Lyle Waggoner had been picked as Batman instead of Adam West, then maybe Batman could have been done as more of a serious show, and thus allowing for swapping in and out and evolving along with the way Batman evolved in the comics into the 70s and onward. If you watch Waggoner's screen test, it does come off as the way drama stories were in the 60s: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Vpl-eO6Tik

There is another problem raised though, which is that the more serious take on Batman in the comics and in the 80s film came about to rebuke the campiness of the show. "Biff", "Pow" and "Zap" clung onto the Batman franchise like glue for decades, and it was hard to shake off. If the show is more straight forward, then there may not be that more serious take in reaction to it, and certainly not at all the 80s grittiness introduced with "The Dark Knight Returns" which followed afterward. The 70s serious Batman I'd expect to see, but not the 80's grit.
 
So, if NBC picks up Batman for the 1968 to 1969 season, does that mean they might instead drop, say, another show cancelled in 1968 but then brought back for the '68-'69 season?

Of course, I'm talking about the original Star Trek. If NBC's spending all this money on reviving Batman, then they can't afford to save yet another show from cancellation. So Star Trek doesn't get a third season, they probably don't get syndicated, they don't get renewed popularity from syndication in the 1970s, they definitely don't get any feature films, spin-offs, et cetera.

So one extra season of Batman just killed off the entire Star Trek franchise.

And since there's no X-Men films, Patrick Stewart continues to play side characters in cheesy science fiction films and Shakespeare on stage, but never becomes a TV and movie star.
 
And since there's no X-Men films, Patrick Stewart continues to play side characters in cheesy science fiction films and Shakespeare on stage, but never becomes a TV and movie star.

Another filter for Patrick Stewart: he only got X-Men because of Star Trek: The Next Generation bringing him fame, and making him a fan idea for who could be Professor X. So alter Star Trek as has been proposed as a possibility should Batman hurt it, and you've stopped him from X-Men just there.
 
7. Superman the Movie is never made since Donner never felt he could get Jor-el right.
The Salkinds brought Marlon Brando onto the project before they signed on Donner. In all likelihood, they would have found another star to fill the role of Jor-El. Though interestingly one of the reasons why the Salkinds moved production to England from Italy, other than the value of the lira going, was that Brando had an outstanding warrant for indecency of some sort. I wonder if the Superman production stayed in Italy for one reason or another, would Guy Hamilton still have directed Superman? That would make for some interesting butterflies.
 
That timeline seems rather implausible.

Pray tell, how so?

Also, its a work of fiction not something that actually happened.

Did you know that Top Gun led to a noticeable spike in Navy recruitment? Did you know that Jaws led to an uptick in shark poaching?

That's the principle. Popular works of fiction can and do affect sociopolitical issues.

And even if they didn't, why are you so dismissive of pop culture "what-ifs?" to begin with?
 
The Salkinds brought Marlon Brando onto the project before they signed on Donner. In all likelihood, they would have found another star to fill the role of Jor-El. Though interestingly one of the reasons why the Salkinds moved production to England from Italy, other than the value of the lira going, was that Brando had an outstanding warrant for indecency of some sort. I wonder if the Superman production stayed in Italy for one reason or another, would Guy Hamilton still have directed Superman? That would make for some interesting butterflies.

That is the weak link in the chain. I think the earlier links are pretty solid, but that one is pretty weak. But I couldn't resist the idea that adding a year of Batman TV Show could kill off all future comic superhero screen adaptions when the chain led to a likelihood that Marlon Brando wouldn't revive his career with the Godfather.
 
I was going to bring something like this, but how about new villains?

Plans were in the mix to have Clint Eastwood play Two-Face if they'd had a fourth season, but as a disfigured reporter rather than a DA.

Who could be a good 60's Ra's Al Ghul? I'm thinking Omar Sharif, but he could be too big for tv...

Other thoughts anyone?
 
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