Tim Burton WTF?

Way back when he was just a lad fresh out of CalArts, Tim Burton was given an apprenticeship with Disney - in fact he did background work in the animation department for Tron and The Fox and the Hound.

On the side he made three shorts, one of which, "Vincent," would be the prototype character for The Corpse Bride. His signature work though would be his live-action short "Frankenweenie" that'd encapsulate Burton's unique blend of macabe with humor. Basically it's about a reanimated wiener dog and his owner, a kid who winds up becoming a bit of a Dr. Frankenstein. 

The short actually got Burton fired from Disney, because they viewed it as him misusing company time to make a dark movie that could scare kids. The weirdest part? It's coming out as a feature film next year, by Disney. It's like the ultimate Hollywood WTF?

Tim Burton seemed like the perfect director for After Hours, the kooky 1985 comedy about a character's roaming misadventures in New York's SoHo neighborhood. It seemed like the perfect opportunity for Tim Burton, and yet it was directed by Martin Scorsese. What gives?

Burton was about to shoot the film, when out of nowhere Martin Scorsese showed up. A lack of funds for The Last Temptation of Christ sent Scorsese into the wilds. He approached the project because he liked the After Hours screenplay that he read and Burton stepped aside and let him direct the movie out of respect. 

Call us crazy but we can't picture Scorsese, forever made infamous to us by those American Express ads, ever doing the same. In fact, a Burton-directed After Hours seems so perfect for his old madcap material. Instead though, we would get Burton tackling comic adaptations. 

Believe it or not, Michael Keaton was a strange choice for Batman, but perfect for Bruce Wayne. It was a weird choice since Keaton wasn't much of an action star and best known back then for being in Burton's previous film Beetlejuice.

It wound up being great, but Batman became only a little less hammy when Keaton's Batman could hardly move. But he was worlds better thank eventual replacement Val Kilmer or George Clooney. Still, Burton is not a traditionalist when casting. But the man has his reasons, no matter how bizarre. 

Burton's 2001 remake of Planet of The Apes really wasn't that good, but it paved the way for this summer's Rise of the Planet of the Apes; we didn't even stop to think about whether Burton could do a sequel.