Tim Burton’s Not Interested in Directing Another Superhero Movie

Tim Burton may have changed superhero movies forever with his Batman films. But he’s not interested in going back to make another superhero movie.

That’s what Burton told Variety, explaining that if he were asked to make a new superhero movie, at the movie he “would say no.”

“I come at things from different points of view,” he added, “so I would never say never to anything. But, at the moment, it’s not something I’d be interested in.”

Burton said his tenure directing Batman and then Batman Returns was “lucky” because “at that time, the word ‘franchise’ didn’t exist. So Batman felt slightly experimental at the time.” Burton added that he wasn’t even interested in making a Batman sequel back in the 1990s until he was “reenergized” by the thought of adding Penguin and Catwoman to the story.

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After his two Batman films, Burton did almost direct a third DC movie: Superman Lives, which was set to star Nicolas Cage as the Man of Steel. Although it was never made, Burton spent a year developing the material before Warner Bros. finally canceled the project in 1998. (The whole sordid saga is chronicled in the documentary The Death of Superman Lives: What Happened?)

Nicolas Cage made a cameo as his version of Superman in 2023’s The Flash (which also starred Burton’s Batman, Michael Keaton, in a supporting role). Burton was not flattered by the homage, though; in interviews last year he said he was in “quiet revolt” about the use of his characters in modern DC movies. (That might have something to do with his disinterest in a new superhero movie as well.)

Burton’s Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is scheduled to open in theaters on September 6.