Michael Keaton — who launched the “Batman” franchise in 1989 before his career as a leading man went into hibernation — is making a comeback in a film that happens to be about a “washed-up” actor who once starred in a superhero franchise and plots a comeback.
Keaton said on Monday he didn’t worry the movie, “Birdman,” might be confused with his own story.
“There was that moment where you go, ‘Is this going to be an issue in terms of having played Batman?'” Keaton said at Le Cirque after the movie closed the New York Film Festival. “There was almost really no time to discuss this because there was so much work to do.”
He added that he and director Alejandro G. Iñárritu, “had a brief moment there regarding, ‘You played this guy,’ but he didn’t really care to talk about that much.”
The movie, which opens Friday and has flown into Oscar contention in multiple categories, is set in Broadway’s St. James Theatre and shot to look like one continuous take.
Naomi Watts said achieving that illusion was nerve-wracking. The assignment once left “Zach [Galifianakis] looking pale behind a closed door, [and] I was sort of shaking just to get the lines out. If you were the one that dropped a line or made another actor miss their cue . . . you would let the team down.”