Wesley Strick is an American screenwriter. Strick was hired by director Tim Burton for the final revisions on the Daniel Waters script prior and during filming Batman Returns. Strick replaced Waters entirely and stayed as the on-set writer throughout the entirety of filming and editing phases of the production.
Batman Returns
Shooting script
Strick's primary job was 'normalizing' nearly all of Waters' unusable dialogue, Michael Keaton specifically requested shorter dialogue changes for his character. Major changes were needed for Penguin's characterization and motivation. Strick was inspired by the killing of the firstborn sons in the Bible, making a parallel between Oswald Cobblepot and Moses. This parallelism was used by Strick even for the abandon of Oswald by the Cobblepots. Strick was also able to remove the Marlan Wayans mechanic character, referred to only as 'The Kid', from the script. Apparently Burton was able to give convince Warner Brothers that the character wasn't needed at the last minute once again, reflecting when the younger actor Ricky Addison Reed was cast then dropped just prior to filming the first movie. Some major action scenes needed to be dropped for budgetary concerns coming from producer Larry Franco.
Lack of screen credit
Due to the screenwriters guild limitations on how many writer credits are allowed, Strick was not given credit in the final film, though originally planned as seen in early trailers. Sam Hamm's legal representation somehow won him a credit over Strick, even though virtually none of the ideas from his unused story were utilized. This is further evidenced in Michael Singer's Batman Returns: The Official Movie Book where Hamm's name is not mentioned, Waters is given story credit and Struck the screenplay, reflecting reality. Apparently Craig Shaw Gardner's novelization and Andrew Helfer's junior novelization were printed later, shortly before the film's release with Hamm credited for the story.
Collaborations
Other works of Wesley Strick include Arachnophobia, Martin Scorsese's Cape Fear, Wolf (starring Jack Nicholson and Michelle Pfeiffer), The Saint (starring Val Kilmer), and the 2010 remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street. Most notably Tim Burton chose Strick to write the initial drafts of his Superman movie, but was ultimately replaced by Dan Gilroy for the potential shooting drafts.
Videos
