"Batman Encounters King Kong" (June 1966)

General goings on in the 1966 Batman World

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Mr. Glee
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"Batman Encounters King Kong" (June 1966)

Post by Mr. Glee »

I know this Martin Grams article (http://martingrams.blogspot.com/2011/05 ... eries.html) about the show has been discussed here before, but I was just re-reading it and got curious about the reference to Dozier's brief flirtation with the idea of making a movie called "Batman Encounters King Kong." (I assume this idea morphed into the later "Batman Meets Godzilla" treatment found in the Dozier archives.)

According to the Grams article, Dozier announced and then abandoned the "King Kong" project within the space of a month (June 1966), but it turns out it did get mentioned in a couple of nationally syndicated TV columns, though these suggested the story would be featured on the series itself:
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Since there's no indication that a script or treatment featuring Kong was ever written, I doubt there was any truth to the claim that Bruce Cabot had been officially cast.
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BatMite
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Re: "Batman Encounters King Kong" (June 1966)

Post by BatMite »

Very interesting. Thanks for posting.
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epaddon
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Re: "Batman Encounters King Kong" (June 1966)

Post by epaddon »

Bruce Cabot of course was in the original "Kong" as Jack Driscoll. I just can't imagine how the heck they were going to pull that off because at the time if someone wanted to do *anything* Kong related, you needed to get permission from RKO-General the heirs to the original RKO Studio that had made the 33 movie. Even Toho had to do that to get permission to make their Japanese Kong movies. It was only in the mid-70s that a court ruled that the novelization of the movie that had first appeared in 1933 was in the public domain (and the ramifications of that are still confusing to this day). Dozier at bare minimum would have had to go through RKO-General and while they might have signed off, there would have been fees involved.
elmrgraham
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Re: "Batman Encounters King Kong" (June 1966)

Post by elmrgraham »

Holy Excellent.
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High C
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Re: "Batman Encounters King Kong" (June 1966)

Post by High C »

epaddon wrote: Sun May 05, 2019 7:18 pm Dozier at bare minimum would have had to go through RKO-General and while they might have signed off, there would have been fees involved.
That would have been a $$$ problem for Dough-zier.

Thanks to the OP for the research. It seems like Dozier really was getting full of himself around this time and, as other newspaper stories of that time had noted, he was confident the movie would be a big success despite the age-old problem of getting people to fork over their $$$ for something they could get for gratis on TV.
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