14 Interesting Facts About the ’60s ‘Batman’ TV Show

7. Batman’s Head Writer Started with Short Stories

The man hired as Batman’s head writer was Lorenzo Semple Jr., a writer who’d started by contributing short stories to The Saturday Evening Post. During his time working on Batman, he directed the camp comedy feel of the show and wrote a lot of the first season as well as the feature film that came out after the first season. Afterwards, Semple put his stamp on a ton of Hollywood classics including Paillon, The Parallax View, and Three Days of the Condor.

8. Why the Time-Split?

Batman was originally crafted as an entire hour of television to be aired consecutively. However, when it came time to put the show on the schedule, ABC discovered that it only had two separated half-hour slots available. So, the decision was made to split the show up into two half-hour segments to air in both time slots. The experiment worked, essentially establishing a cliffhanger at the beginning of the week that resolved itself during the second half of the week.

9. ‘Batman: the Movie’ Didn’t Tank Like They’d Expected

In 1966, 20th Century Fox somewhat reluctantly greenlit a feature film version based on Dozier’s TV show. Dozier’s plan was to generate interest in the show by putting some content in a place that would garner more attention. Batman’s first movie appearance, Batman: the Movie was a critically praised comedy that performed moderately well at the box office.