In 2008, I was working as head of the art department of a British film struggling to find the final third of £3M budget - a story I came to learn was only too common.

The film industry does not make it easy for private investors to participate. Producers have to start from scratch every time. When they do, there are no simple financing vehicles that would allow many investors to put small amounts of money into many projects. This applies to both independent films as it does to one’s favorite Hollywood films, no matter how passionate an investor might feel about a particular property.

I don't know if it was the struggle with the British film or that I had just seen The Dark Knight, but I woke up at 3am one night that year thinking 'How could I invest in Batman?'

So how could I invest in Batman? Or the indie film I was working on for that matter? Me, a regular guy. That question stuck with me. Over the following five years I have learned precisely why I CAN'T invest in Batman, and how I can now see it becoming a possibility. Investors looking to put money into tentpoles are faced with two basic options: buying shares in the media conglomerate responsible or else participate through co-financing vehicles such as Legendary Pictures that partnered with Warner Bros on The Dark Night. But neither scenario, as we pointed out in a filmonomics post last year, is straightforward for private individuals. Yet, with crowdfunding and the JOBS Act, this impossibility now seems, well, inevitable.

I told Michael Uslan this story over dinner one evening. Michael, who bought the rights to The Batman in 1979, is the exec producer of ALL the films since Tim Burton brought the first one to the big screen starring Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson in 1989 - leading all the way to the Christopher Nolan versions and the upcoming Batman vs Superman. He is a humble fanboy of comics, whose personal struggle over several decades to bring his vision to the screen, is nothing short of a complete triumph of entrepreneurial perseverance over risk, well documented in the memoir The Boy Who Loved Batman.

Michael's first Batman script was written in 1975. The script featured no super-villans, no Robin, just one vision for what a serious Batman might look like. It wasn't intended to distract from Frank Miller’s great seminal work in the deconstruction of the superhero and the growth of the graphic novel. Miller’s 1986 work would actually prove helpful in getting the 1989 movie made, as executives, agents, and talent saw that a dark and serious Batman could be colossally successful.

After pitching his film to the powers that be, Michael moved on to the part of the producing business we all hate the most - waiting.

His story is one of many a filmmaker, or even an entrepreneur, with a vision. Some scripts take years to become a reality. Most never do. It took nearly 30 years between writing the first script and enjoying the billion dollar success of The Dark Knight. 

After reading about his own trials in getting The Dark Knight to the world’s screens, find out from Michael himself what advice he has for those who want to follow in his footsteps, how technology is helping to level the superhero playing field for independents too, and what Michael is planning next on this very platform.

The Boy Who Loved Batman excerpt | Michael Uslan

On October 3, 1979, Ben [Melniker] and I formed BatFilm Productions, Inc., and paid the option price with money we had raised from friends and family. Contractually, Warner Bros. had the right of first negotiation. Not only did they have no interest whatsoever in making a non-Superman comic book character into a feature film, they so hated the idea that they declined to even listen to my pitch. It was just "thanks for the right of first negotiation, but no thanks, goodbye, and good luck". I still have their mailgram passing on Batman as part of my favorite rejection slips collection.

I was stunned by the stone-cold rejection we got without even a chance to pitch the idea. Ben always knew how to take bad news and turn it around. Whenever something bad or devastating happened in business, he would tell me to complete the following sentence: “The is the GREATEST thing that could have happened because…” We always found a way to complete that sentence, no matter how bleak things became. Now, it was the fact that, in the end, Warner’s passing opened the door for other studios to make a deal with us for Batman. I really wanted to go back to my alma mater United Artists first, so this was my big chance! I went in to pitch to a Production VP, who was an interesting guy with a habit of using a classic expletive after almost every other word, so I’ll present ever OTHER word of his rejection following my heartfelt pitch. “Michael, you’re _______ insane! Batman and Robin will _________ never be successful because the movie ____________ Robin and Marian didn’t do well! (Robin and Marian was a ‘70s movie starring Sean Connery and Audrey Hepburn as an aging Robin Hood and Maid Marian.)

I give up. YOU tell ME.

I stared at him in silence for a few long moments, and then scooped up the Batman comics I had brought in to illustrate my pitch, stood up, turned around, and walked out of his office. But at various times over the following ten years, I would climb to the top of a mountain and sit in a lotus position and ponder what he had said to me. After all this time and thought, I can only conclude that he said what he said because the movie title “Robin and Marian” and the comic book characters Batman and Robin share the common word Robin. There’s simply no other nexus. So much for my alma mater.

I thought every studio would line up at my doorstep for my vision of Batman. But everywhere we went, the results were the same. “Michael, you’re out of your mind! You can’t make a movie out of some old television series! That’s never been done!” “Michael, you’re nuts! You can’t make a comic book superhero ‘dark and serious’!” “Michael, you’re crazy! The world will only remember and love the potbellied, funny, Pow! Zap! Wham! Batman. We’ll consider that, but only that.” At several times, we had development funding but distribution deals fell through. As a result, one day we found ourselves pitching at Columbia. The head of Production then was a dapper, silver-haired gentleman who, like just about everyone I had been pitching to, was of that Dr. Wertham generation. When I concluded my pitch, he shook his head and gave ma a real old-fashioned “tsk-tsk” and said, “Michael you’re wrong. Batman will never work as a movie because our movie Annie didn’t do well.”

“Wait a second,” I said, caught somewhere in between the Twilight Zone and the Bizarro World, “are you talking about the little redheaded girl who sings ‘Tomorrow’?”

“Yes, of course,” he smiled.

“But what does SHE have to do with Batman?” I begged, pleading for sanity.

“Oh, come ON, Michael!” he said dismissively. “They’re BOTH out of the FUNNY pages.”

And THAT was my rejection from Columbia Pictures.

“We’re going to ‘pass.’” “We’re ‘passing’ on Batman.” It’s a ‘pass’ for us.” “While we’re ‘passing’ on Batman, our door is open if you want to come back and discuss the campy TV version.” “Thanks, but it’s a ‘pass,’”

Every single studio turned me down. What I thought would be a quick sale with studio after studio competing for the rights was quickly becoming one dead end after another for Ben and me.

I wound up doing three things along the way to try to make the concept of The Batman stalking criminals from the shadows into a concept Hollywood execs might find easier to grasp. In addition to that “Return of The Batman” script I wrote with Michael Bourne, I wrote a seventeen-page, single-spaced creative blueprint memo specifically explaining the difference between the campy Batman these people knew from TV and the original Bob Kane-Bill Finger concept of Batman as a creature of the night. The third piece of the puzzle fell into place for me in late May of 1980. Memorial Day weekend was upon us, and I hopped on the NJ Transit bus in New York City, headed for home. At the Port Authority Bus Terminal, I bought the New York Post and opened it to the weekend movie section. And there it was! Staring back at me was that famous Jack Nicholson “Here’s Johnny” publicity still from the horror film The Shining, which was opening that weekend along with the higher profile The Empire Strikes Back. I immediately realized what I was looking at. I tore it out of the newspaper. I could barely contain myself until I could get off that bus, race home to my desk, and get to work on that picture. I used White-Out to whiten Jack Nicholson’s face. I used a red pen to do his lips. Then I used a Magic Marker on his hair. Voila! He was the only actor then who could play the Joker! No, he WAS the Joker!

So with the clock ticking loudly in our ears, Ben and I found ourselves with a pile of rejections from all the major studios and what were then called mini-majors like the Ladd Company and Lorimar Pictures. “Rejections” is not the correct term. They were more along the line of “This is the worst idea I’ve ever heard!” But Ben had a Plan B. He explained that when he had been running MGM, he had attempted to hire three talented young guys to run the studio’s production as a “troika.” They were Barry Beckerman, Jerry Takovsky, and Peter Guber. Guber had gone on to become a vice president at Columbia Pictures. But now, he and Beckerman were working together at Casablanca Records with Guber’s partner, Neil Bogart. Casablanca was a record label mainstay of the disco era. Ben had heard they were about to be funded by PolyGram of Europe to do a slate of feature films. Ben felt that Peter and Barry were younger and more hip than the production execs I’d been pitching to thus far. With one call, he got Peter on the line and put me on the phone to provide the short version of the pitch. Peter thought I sounded great and wanted all the details and the full pitch. He asked if we could come in to see him the very next day at his office on Sunset Boulevard near Laurel Canyon. I explained that we were in New York but could be there in two days. And we were.

At Casablanca, we met Paul, Neil, Barry, and their biz affairs lawyer, David Saunders, whom I had dealt with lawyer-to-lawyer at United Artists. My pitch would be to Peter and Barry. Exactly the way I had pitched to Ben, I launched into my passion pilled pitch for Batman. . . “The” Batman. . . to be brought to the silver screen. I took them through the comic book history of Batman, using comic books from my personal collection to usher them into the world of this creature of the night. I showed them the first Batman story from Detective Comics #27 and the first Joker story and Catwoman tale from Batman #1. I showed them “Night of the Stalker,” my favorite ever Batman story, and “Night of the Reaper.” I gave them the overview of the Denny O’Neil/Neal Adams and the Steve Engelhart/Marshall Rogers runs on Batman and Detective. I guided them through the script I had written. . . just enough to give them the feel for a dark Batman. I reintroduced them to Batman’s villains. . . NOT the way they were portrayed on the TV series, but the way they were originally conceived. And I introduced them to the greatest Batman villains created after the TV show, Ra’s al Ghul and Man-Bat. I told them the story of the origin of Batman and the origin of the Joker, and when I was done, both Peter and Barry were enthusiastic. We discussed possible writers and directors. A picture of this size and packaged with action and SFX led us all quickly to the James Bond films, and everyone was in agreement that the two best Bond writers were Richard Maibaum and Tom Mankiewicz. (Tom had also been the lifesaving script doctor on the Superman movie). Guy Hamilton’s name was the first mentioned for director. (He had directed Goldfinger among other films). Peter, who was pacing while I was pitching, was totally caught up in it and on board. “Let’s do it!” he proclaimed, and instructed us to lock ourselves in a room with David and not emerge until a deal was made. Barry would be the day-to-day production exec working on this with us. And Universal would be the distributor because Casablanca had an overall deal with them. And we were then locked away for three days and nights until a deal was reached.

This was it! We were on our way! What I did not know was that we were on our way to a ten-year odyssey that would test my mettle, test my ability to withstand inhuman levels of frustration, challenge my belief in myself and my work, and force me to pull my belt to its last notch with my back financially against the wall. Where was my own superhero now? Where was Batman when I really needed him? Maybe I had to look within.

Michael Uslan: COMICS are frozen movies. The art of graphic story-telling has directly influenced cinema and, over the decades, vice versa. Orson Welles was a fan of comics and the influence they had can be seen in many of his shots in "Citizen Kane." Take a look at recent films like "Sin City." Many of today's most noted film-makers are comic book buffs who are the first to admit the extent to which they impacted the way they visualize stories.

THE singular most important thing is to valiantly attempt to find a filmmaker who is passionate about a comic book character and story, respects the integrity of it, has a vision for it, and knows how to execute that vision.

New Media will force open new doors for producing such IP-based franchise films on a much more sane and limited budget. Already, there is a brand new movement in TV and for features in this lower budget range that, thanks to continual advances in SFX, can be done reasonably without looking cheesy.

SLATED is the future and the future is today! It utilizes the best aspects of social media, it involves vetted professionals, and it has become for me the Match.com of independent film financing.

In addition to my upcoming studio pictures, I'm producing my first independent film project in 29 years and I couldn't be more excited about it! "Madame Carr" is my passion project. It is a true story of female empowerment and the evolution of a great woman, based not only on a wonderful book, but also on a potentially award-winning screenplay by the illustrious Anna Hamilton Phelan, whose A-List credits include "Girl Interrupted," "Gorillas In the Mist," and "Mask." We will shoot the film in Africa next year and it will be featured shortly on Slated.