August 30, 2002 -- HOLY Broadway! "Batman: The Musical" has finally landed a director - Tim Burton. Warner Brothers, which is producing the multimillion-dollar musical, has been courting Burton, who directed the 1989 "Batman" movie as well as the 1992 sequel "Batman Returns," for over a year. [...]
Burton - who also directed "Planet of the Apes" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" - has never staged a musical before, though he's said to enjoy the theater and has mused to friends that he'd like to start a puppet theater one day.
According to one theater source, he wants to direct "Batman: The Musical" because he is not pleased with the goofy, campy turn the franchise took with "Batman Forever" and "Batman and Robin," both of which were directed by Joel Schumacher.
Burton will begin working on the musical full-time next year. The plan is to open out of town in 2004 and arrive on Broadway in 2005. [...]
Steinman, whose "Dance of the Vampires" opens this fall on Broadway, described his "Batman" score as a mixture of "Brecht, Weill, Rodgers & Hammerstein and rock 'n' roll."
The overall design concept, as of right now, he said, is "Gotham City as Berlin in the 1930s." [...]
Update: I think some clarification on the subject of this post might be in order: there was an ep of Batman Beyond where Terry takes Bruce to a Broadway performance of Batman The Musical. They do a truly painful "Supersitious and Cowardly Lot" song, and Bruce turns to Terry and says, "you really hate me, don't you?"
