Danny Elfman on Prince and scoring Batman

[The Laughing Fish]

I'm surprised to read what Elfman had to say about his experience.

When B89 was in production, an idea was floated around that Prince should collaborate on writing the music with Elfman, but Elfman refused to do so because he knew he'd be playing second fiddle to Prince's ego. He even left the project, until he was brought back after the producers agreed to give him full control of the score. I never knew that. It seems there was a clash between writing an original score to make it distinct from the Superman theme by John Williams and an agenda to write pop music by Prince. Thankfully, they agreed to fit both into the final product.

https://www.musicradar.com/news/danny-elfman-batman-prince

[The Joker]

Yeah, this is new to me. Evidently, Warners seemed to just really want Prince to collaborate with someone it seems, as Midnight's Edge shed some light on the production of the B89 soundtrack, and elaborated upon the notion of a Prince/Michael Jackson collaboration (Batman ballads/Joker pop) that was not to be.