Michael Keaton Sadly Playing ‘Birdman’, Not ‘Harvey Birdman’

You may wake up this morning to the news that Michael Keaton is playing Birdman, and you might be wondering why, precisely, the Hanna Barbera cartoon is getting a feature film adaptation. It’s not. Instead one of the masters of depressing cinema has decided to rib us nerds.

We refer, of course, to Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu, the director of such great movies that make you want to kill yourself like Amores Perros and 21 Grams. Not content with making arthouse audiences put the suicide hotline on speed dial, Innaritu’s latest script aims squarely at your beloved memories of Batman:

As opposed to Gonzalez Inarritu’s usual soul-searing dramas, Birdman is a dark comedy that follows a former actor, who once played an iconic superhero, as he mounts a Broadway play based on a Raymond Carver short story in a bid to reclaim past glory. However, the play’s egotistical leading man threatens to throw everything down the tubes.

That former actor? Yep, Keaton. Gee, we wonder what superhero will have the numbers filed off for his appearance in this film.

The cast also includes Emma Stone as Keaton’s currently-sober daughter, Zach Galifianakis as a scheming executive, and Naomi Watts, who’s probably grateful to have gotten a script that’s a bit more lighthearted.

Leaving aside the fact that this smells a lot like a Kevin Smith movie, this could be pretty amusing. Or it could be yet another arthouse movie that gets superheroes completely wrong. Either way, we hope they already cut Hanna Barbera a check.