Making animated series based on comics or violent storylines can always become a tricky affair for its creators and the studio. A similar thing could’ve happened to the iconic series that kicked off the DC Animated Universe, Batman: The Animated Series had it not been for Warner Bros Studio giving the writers the freedom to not make a series whose intended audience was only the kids.
Henry Gilroy talks about how Warner Bros Studio gave a green light to BTAS to go all out
Batman is one of the most popular superheroes of DC Comics and will certainly go down in history as one of the greatest superheroes of all time. Multiple series and movies, both animated and live-action of the character have been developed over the years and a lot of actors have portrayed the role of Bruce Wayne aka Batman.
Batman: The Animated Series, created by Bruce Timm brought the iconic character to life and will arguably go down in history as one of the most successful and popular animated series of the DC Universe. The series was a massive success among the fans as it had a little bit of everything, and the storylines of the series were not always made with the thought that most of its viewers were going to be kids.
The animator and screenwriter of Batman: The Animated Series, Henry Gilroy once opened up in an interview and revealed one of the reasons behind the success of the series. According to Gilroy, the executives at Warner Bros Animation had given them a lot of freedom about how they did not want the series to necessarily become a kids’ show. He said,
“Let’s make these stories not adult in nature, but just not aimed down at kids. Have the stakes be real, real jeopardy and danger, and have the emotions be real, rather than caricaturized, or stylized, or exaggerated for cartoons.” (via Slashfilm)
MCU May Have Only Been Successful Because Of What Bruce Timm Accomplished With The DCAU 20 Years Ago
Although Batman: The Animated Series was intended for a bit more mature audience than kids, there was still one idea that Bruce Timm couldn’t bring to life.
Batman almost ended up becoming a vampire in one of the episodes from Batman: The Animated Series
Batman: The Animated Series featured a lot of iconic villains of the comics in the series. However, one of the things that made the series special and different from the other franchises was that some of the lesser-known villains from the comics were also made a part of the series.
The creator of the series, Bruce Timm had a good relationship with Fox Kids and the studio was usually acceptive of his creative and unique ideas. However, there was this one time when the studio outright rejected one of Timm’s ideas. Once in an interview with ScienceFiction, the legendary director opened up about the incident and said,
“I had an idea to do an episode where Batman got turned into a vampire temporarily. There’s a character in the comics called Nocturna! And it didn’t get much past the idea phase, we floated it past Fox Kids and they said ‘Nope! No Vampires!’ and I said ‘Well what if he wasn’t really a Vampire?’ and they said ‘No Vampires!’“
Bruce Timm further revealed although he never lost sleep over this idea, it still could’ve been interesting to see a vampire version of The Dark Knight on the show.
Batman: The Animated Series was a major critical success among fans and critics alike for its mature writing, incredible animation, and staying as close as possible to the source material. The series is even widely regarded as the 2nd greatest animated series of all time. (after The Simpsons, of course)
All episodes of Batman: The Animated Series are currently streaming on HBO Max.
