Michael Keaton may have made his last appearance in the cape and cowl – and not to mention in a superhero movie – in The Flash. However, that does not preclude another nostalgia trip into a facet or figment of the ‘Burtonverse’ somewhere down the line.
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If the offer and timing are right, anything is possible. When promoting his next movie (Knox Goes Away, which he also directs) during an appearance on the Happy Sad Confused podcast with Josh Horowitz, Keaton was asked about the possibility.
His answer indicates the door might be open a crack – or maybe more. “I don’t think about it much,” he answered. “Never say never, I don’t think. Everything depends upon something else, I guess.”
Everything in this scenario would depend on Warner Bros. and the new DC Studios picking a direction and sticking with it. They had a plan for Keaton to appear at the end of The Flash and set up his place in the softly rebooted DCEU.
He was meant to continue from there as a mentor to Barbara Gordon in Batgirl, and potentially to Terry McGinnis in a rumored Batman Beyond film. Asked if he’d seen the former, Keaton said no, except for a few scenes.
The plans were out the window after the shelving of Batgirl, followed by the appointment of James Gunn to head DC Studios and the unveiling of his desired slate that begins with Creature Commandos and Superman.
The failure of The Flash and Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom – which Keaton filmed an unused cameo for – was the final collective nail in the coffin of his Dark Knight’s immediate future.
Keaton has, however, regrouped with Tim Burton for a new Beetlejuice movie, which he admitted to Horowitz was years in the making. He and Burton would talk about it on and off to no avail, due largely, he said, to the mischievous entity being hard to write.
They overcame that obstacle and thus Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice – which is out this September – was conceived thirty years after Keaton stepped into that part. (There seems to be a pattern here.)