Michael E. Uslan was a wideeyed, 28-year-old comics fan when he improbably scooped up the film rights to a character Hollywood had kicked to the curb. Brimming with belief, he bought Batman. Problem was, no one else in town was buying.

It was the late ’70s, the era of The Deer Hunter and Apocalypse Now, when Uslan, a comics scholar turned aspiring producer, pitched the major studios on his idea for a Bat-project. He was met with rejection after rejection. One industry executive told him Batman was “as dead as the dodo.”

“It can’t be comprehended today,” Uslan says. “There was no respect for superheroes or their creators.”

The film industry, like much of society at large, still viewed comic books as simply kid stuff. But Uslan saw a path forward: “If we do it as a dark and serious movie, it will almost be like a brand new form of entertainment.”

Today, it’s easy to overlook Batman’s long ’80s slog to Hollywood respectability and bankability. The film’s roller-coaster evolution — from finding producers to winning over wary comics fans — spanned much of the decade.

But the movie’s bruising history can be obscured by its massive success and influence. The Batman film franchise has since grossed nearly $5 billion globally, and the character has been central to the ongoing DC Extended Universe, which has grossed nearly $5.3 billion worldwide.

Everything changed on June 23, 1989, with the release of Batman, directed by rising animator turned auteur Tim Burton. Thirty summers ago, the film radically expanded the parameters of action-hero casting and box office forecasting, as well as the marketing and merchandising around comic book movies. The A-list, PG-13 film also paved the way for three decades of superhero cinema that has come to increasingly dominate Hollywood.

So much was different in a pre-Batman world — before superhero trailers were pored over like the Dead Sea Scrolls; before the demand for new toys and action figures swelled well ahead of a comic book movie’s release; before a superhero’s tale was the biggest title of the year.

Comic-book adaptations made in roads in the late ’70s, when the first Superman movie starring Christopher Reeve made a major splash. But that franchise fizzled out by its third sequel in 1987 as yawning audiences turned away from the growing silliness, so there was no industry momentum leading up to Batman.

Making matters more difficult, the ’60s Adam West-starring TV series, saturated as it was with cheesy effects, costumes and sound-effect balloons, had taken a toll on the character’s wider pop-culture appeal. As a result, “There was no great interest in the movie business in making Batman,” says Paul Levitz, who was then executive vice-president and publisher at DC Comics — even though the comic books had begun to reclaim the grittier shades of the Dark Knight.

Since the character had become a caricature in the mainstream imagination, the project needed a director who could craft a shadowy, psychologically rich movie to attract adult audiences, says Uslan, an executive producer on Batman.

The fortunes of the Batman project changed significantly in the mid-’80s, when the producers sought the vision of Burton, a visual stylist then best known for Pee-wee’s Big Adventure and Beetlejuice.

“I know it was a team effort — with a lot of brilliant writers, designers, actors, musicians and architects involved — but the decision to hire Tim Burton as the director was the real turning point,” says Andrew Farago, curator of the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco and co-author, with Gina McIntyre, of the forthcoming book, Batman: The Definitive History of the Dark Knight in Comics, Film, and Beyond.

After Burton was aboard, Uslan screened Pee-wee’s Big Adventure. “I’d never seen a more creative combination of direction and art direction,” he says. “I was amazed he was not a comic book guy. It was my job to indoctrinate him into the world of dark and serious Batman comics.”

A dark tone was especially crucial because the filmmakers were determined to restore Batman to the proper perch that had defined the character soon after his Detective Comics debut in 1939. Batman’s creators, Bob Kane and Bill Finger, had painted the Caped Crusader not as a wacky combatant, but as a menacing, tormented figure of the night bent on vigilante justice.

Uslan says Burton also brought two especially crucial concepts to the film. “He said: ‘This is not a movie about Batman. If we’re going to do it seriously, this is a movie about Bruce Wayne,’” Batman’s on-the-edge playboy alter ego who goes down a dark path.

Burton also knew it was vital that the audience quickly suspend their disbelief and buy into a Gotham City that would be “the third-most important character in this piece,” Uslan says. “Because if they don’t believe Gotham City, then they will never believe this guy getting dressed up as a bat.”

But what kind of cast and crew could help make this twisted Gotham City setting feel real?

Burton found a simpatico spirit creatively in British production designer Anton Furst — who, working with Peter Young, would deliver Batman its lone Academy Award nomination and win, for art direction and set decoration.

The producers also landed a superstar to play their villain. The highly compensated Jack Nicholson ($6 million plus a big cut of the box office), who Uslan had admired in 1980’s The Shining, would play their Joker, delivering a high-octane, Golden Globe-nominated performance — and setting a high bar for all future superhero-cinema baddies.

Yet what actor could stand toe to costumed toe with Nicholson? The team, led by producers Jon Peters and Peter Guber, looked away from unknowns and tall, dramatic stars and toward Michael Keaton, the kinetic comic actor of slight build and fastpaced delivery best known for Mr. Mom before teaming up with Burton on 1988’s Beetlejuice.

Comics-savvy executives were initially skeptical about Keaton, whose physique was abetted by a new kind of rubber-carved Batsuit. Uslan says his first reaction to the casting was, “I can picture the posters now: Mr. Mom as Batman. I was apoplectic.” And Levitz scratched his head before being won over by Keaton: “He turned out to be just an amazing actor.”