Updated: October 05, 2025

n the early 1960s, Ed Graham Productions optioned the television rights to the comic book Batman and planned a straightforward juvenile adventure show much like Adventures of Superman and The Lone Ranger, to air on CBS on Saturday mornings.

East Coast ABC executive Yale Udoff, a Batman fan in his childhood, contacted ABC executives Harve Bennett and Edgar J. Scherick, who were already considering developing a television series based on a comic-strip action hero, to suggest a prime-time Batman series in the hip and fun style of The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

As well, in 1964, film buff Hugh Hefner screened all 15 chapters of the 1943 Batman serial at the Playboy Mansion. The trendy event received much notice in the press, prompting Columbia to offer the unedited serial to theaters in 1965 as An Evening with Batman and Robin in one long, marathon showing. This re-release was successful enough to inspire the development of a television series based on the property. When negotiations between CBS and Graham stalled, DC Comics quickly reobtained the rights and made a deal with ABC, which farmed the rights out to 20th Century Fox to produce the series.

In turn, 20th Century Fox handed the project to William Dozier and his production company, Greenway Productions. ABC and Fox expected a hip, fun, yet serious adventure show. However, Dozier, who had never before read comic books, concluded, after reading several Batman comics for research, that the only way to make the show work was to do it as a pop-art campy comedy. Originally, espionage novelist Eric Ambler was to have scripted a TV movie that would launch the television series. However, he dropped out after learning of Dozier's campy comedy approach. Eventually, two sets of screen tests were filmed, one with Adam West and Burt Ward and the other with Lyle Waggoner and Peter Deyell, with West and Ward winning the roles.