Tim Burton, Harrison Ford, and a Batman movie that never came to fruition: “Oh, shit”
In Hollywood, for every role an actor gets, they audition for many others that don’t go their way. Equally, they may be on the shortlist for parts without knowing that a studio had considered them for the role. For huge blockbuster movies, these shortlists can be extensive and wildly varied, containing everything from established A-list icons to unknowns to stars who were famous then but faded away over time. Amusingly, though, when Harrison Ford discovered he was on the shortlist for a genuinely iconic, cinema-changing character in the late 1980s, his reaction was priceless.
In 2025, Ford finally did something he had managed to avoid for almost his entire five-decade career in Hollywood. When he signed up to play General ‘Thunderbolt’ Ross in Captain America: Brave New World, he entered the world of comic book superheroes for the first time. In truth, Ford was simply following the way the wind had been blowing in Hollywood for several decades. After all, when Robert Redford and Michael Douglas are already part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, is there any point in someone like Ford continuing to hold out?
Whatever the case, Ford was his usual sardonic, aloof self when promoting the movie. He pretended he didn’t know anything about the ‘Red Hulk’ – the enormous rage beast his character transforms into in the movie – and generally looked defeated at every question about comic book continuity. However, his best moment came when interviewer Josh Horowitz asked him if he had any idea he was part of the shortlist to play Batman in Tim Burton’s all-conquering 1989 megahit.
“Oh shit!” the nonplussed star exclaimed, while contorting his face into a visage of mock shock and horror. “I could’ve had a career!”
After this brilliant quip, Ford got serious momentarily and admitted that the idea of Warner Bros wanting him to squeeze into the Batsuit never reached his orbit. This likely means it never reached several of the other stars the studio pondered contacting about playing the Dark Knight, either, such as Dennis Quaid, Charlie Sheen, Kevin Costner, Mel Gibson, and Tom Selleck.
Interestingly, before Michael Keaton signed up, which led to nerd outrage the likes of which Hollywood had never experienced before, Pierce Brosnan was one of the few names who actually met with Burton about the role. Unfortunately, he didn’t vibe with Burton’s dark, gothic take on the material and struggled to separate himself from the common image of Batman from the comedic ’60s television show. It probably didn’t help that the only other superhero movies that existed back then were the Christopher Reeve Superman films, so Brosnan had very little frame of reference for a “serious” Batman.
“I just couldn’t really take it seriously,” Brosnan admitted in 2014. “Any man who wears his underpants outside his pants just cannot be taken seriously. That was my foolish take on it. It was a joke, I thought. But how wrong was I?”
Fittingly, Brosnan eventually succumbed to the lure of capes and tights not long before Ford did. In the last few years, audiences saw Indiana Jones play the Red Hulk and James Bond portray the obscure DC Comics character Dr Fate in Dwayne Johnson’s failed franchise starter Black Adam. Both these casting choices spoke to an attitude of “If you can’t beat them, join them” – so it’s no wonder Ford wasn’t exactly brimming with joy to find out he was linked with Batman back in an era when he didn’t need superheroes to prop up his screen career.
