Batman OnStar commercials

"Batman OnStar"
"Batman OnStar" ad
Directed by	Vincent Ward Andrew Davis
Written by	Nancy Wellinger Jim Millis
Starring	Bruce Thomas Curtis Armstrong Brooke Burns Brian Stepanek Michael Gough
Production company	Millennium Pictures Warner Bros.
Country	United States
Language	English

The Batman OnStar commercials were a series of six television commercials featuring comic book superhero Batman, created by ad-agency Campbell-Ewald and aired from 2000 to the beginning of 2002. In 2000, OnStar, DC Comics and Warner Bros. teamed up to promote brand name awareness of the new OnStar onboard guiding system, leading to a large increase in subscribers and a higher rate of subscriber renewals.

Two of the commercials ("Hot Date" and "Riddle Me This") were directed by Vincent Ward, and the other four were directed by Andrew Davis, working with DoP Thomas Kloss. The production company was Millennium Pictures (Detroit), special effects were provided by Flash Film Works, and the scripts were written by Nancy Wellinger and Jim Millis. The Batman OnStar commercials helped promote brand name awareness of the system, leading to a large increase in subscribers and a higher rate of susbcriber renewals.

The commercials were shot at the Warner Bros. lot. Flash Film Works did the special effects, including creating and compositing the Batsignal, airbag, the Riddler's skywriting (copying the writing style from Batman Forever) and erasing/covering various shots of the Warner backlot. Back in 1997, John Dykstra chose Flash Film Works to work on the motion picture Batman & Robin. They created a digital matte painting of an ice-laden Gotham City, as well as performing some rig and wire removal work on the film.

OnStar's licensing agreement with DC Comics had additional benefits, as the production teams were given access to DC's creative resources. The advertisements were thus able to use the 'real' Batcave (which was constructed at the Queen Mary Dome in Long Beach, CA), as well as utilising the Batmobile that was featured in the two Tim Burton-directed Batman films (Batman and Batman Returns). Also featured in the OnStar commercials was composer Danny Elfman's score from the films. The Batsuit that was featured in the commercials was not specifically designed or tailored for Bruce Thomas, the actor that played Batman in the ads, who said it was simply made up of "bits and pieces of stunt guy's suits that fit me". Given the time period it is likely that most of the suit pieces were left over from Batman & Robin. Thomas was trained to "be Batman" by stunt coordinator Alex Daniels, who also performed the stunts in the OnStar commercials. Daniels was already a veteran of the Batman franchise, having done stunts on Batman Forever and Batman & Robin, on which he was also a stunt coordinator. According to Bruce Thomas, much of the crew working on the commercials had also worked on the Batman films.