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Jack Nicholson was cast as the Joker in 1989's Batman nine years prior in the mind of its producer - and he has his 45-year-old painting to prove it
Producer Michael Uslan knew Jack Nicholson was the man to bring the Joker to life almost a decade before director Tim Burton made it happen
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For everyone who enjoyed Jack Nicholson’s performance as the Joker in Tim Burton’s fan-favorite 1989 movie Batman, you have one unlikely person to thank: Stanley Kubrick. After all, if Kubrick hadn’t cast Nicholson in 1980 horror movie The Shining, audiences might have been robbed of his Jack Napier for good. Confused? Let’s leave it to Batman producer Michael Uslan to explain.
Describing it as “the Batman moment that changed history,” Uslan shared the following story on social media: “Memorial weekend 1980 and I get on the bus from New York to head back home to New Jersey. I open the newspaper to the movies section bannering the opening of The Empire Strikes Back and The Shining. For the first time, I see that totally maniacal picture of Jack Nicholson, soon to be known as the ‘Here's Johnny’ shot. ‘Holy Moley! This is the only actor who can play the Joker!’ When I got home, I raced to my desk, took White-Out and whited out Jack's face. I added red lips with my red pen and redid his hair with a magic marker. I tore that out of the paper and showed it to everyone involved in the development of the movie.”
The 1980 date is important in this story, and not just because it means that it was nine years before Uslan saw his Nicholson dream come true. It also means that Uslan had Nicholson in mind for the role of Batman’s arch-nemesis for almost as long as he co-owned the rights to the DC Comics character. Uslan, who’s written for multiple DC comics sporadically since the 1970s, has shared the movie rights to Batman since 1979, when he acquired them in partnership with producer Benjamin Melniker; he still co-owns the rights today, and has been a producer or executive producer on every Batman movie project since 1989’s Batman.
Uslan described the day that Nicholson was finally hired to play the Joker as “the greatest day of my career to that point.” Given the phenomenon that the 1989 movie became upon its release, there are likely many fans who’d agree.
Batman can be streamed on HBO Max.
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