Tim Burton Wasn't Too Happy When Studio Approved Batman Forever’s Nipple Suit: “Go F*** Yourself”

Tim Burton quit the Batman franchise over a nipple costume.

Burton said he was constantly being told by Warner Bros that his ideas were “too weird and too dark” when he was making 1989’s Batman, starring Michael Keaton as the Caped Crusader, and its 1992 sequel, Batman Returns.

So imagine how pissed off he was when the top brass decided to side with director Joel Schumacher’s vision of the Dark Knight — a return to the campy and cartoony tone of the Adam West-era Batman TV series in 1995’s Batman Forever and 1997’s Batman & Robin.

“They went the other way,” Burton, 63, told Empire, in a 30th anniversary retrospective on Batman Returns. “That’s the funny thing about it. But then I was like, ‘Wait a minute, Okay. Hold on a second here. You complain about me, I’m too weird, I’m too dark, and then you put nipples on the costume? Go f*** yourself.’ Seriously. So yeah, I think that’s why I didn’t end up [doing another film in the series].” (Burton, however, retained a producer credit on Batman Forever.)

The “nipples” Burton was referring to were the infamous additions to the Batsuit worn by Val Kilmer in Batman Forever and later George Clooney in Batman and Forever (which turns 25 this year — another milestone celebration!)

Burtons’ comments come shortly after Jose Fernandez, Batman Forever and Batman & Robin’s costumer designer and sculptor explained that the nipples’ origins in Mel Magazine early this month.

He said: “With Val Kilmer's suit in Batman Forever, the nipples were one of those things that I added. It wasn't fetish to me, it was more informed by Roman armor, like Centurions. And in the comic books, the characters always looked like they were naked with spray paint on them — it was all about anatomy, and I like to push anatomy. I don’t know exactly where my head was back in the day, but that’s what I remember. And so I added the nipples. I had no idea there was going to end up being all this buzz about it.”

Fernandez, whose other works include Aquaman and Altered Carbon, added that Schumacher loved the nipples in Batman Forever so much that he wanted them accentuated in Batman & Robin.

“Schumacher wanted them sharpened, like, with points," he said. "They were also circled, both outer and inner — it was all made into a feature of the Batsuit. I didn’t want to do it, but he’s the boss, so we sharpened them, circled them and it all became kind of ridiculous.”

On the nipple-suit's contentious legacy, Fernandez said, “ I didn’t really care or think about it. Whenever I had a chance, I’d explain where the concept came from — from Roman armour — but after a while, it got its own life and I just let it be. I couldn’t think of it much more after that.”

Meanwhile, Tim Burton fans can look out for Wednesday, his Addams Family spin-off series coming to Netflix later this year. The streaming service dropped the teaser trailer for the eight-episode series on Monday, which features Jenny Ortego in the title role.

Photos: TPG News/Click Photos