Originally Posted by
Howlrunner
Basically, McDonalds paid a fortune for the licencing rights to Batman Returns, in order to tie in the movie launch with their Happy Meals. Which are designed for children (obviously).
On the movie launch, the film they got was anything *but* young children friendly, with the Penguin in particular being a point of contention (and the part where he eats the raw fish, and has black slime oozing from his mouth). They basically stated they had been led to believe they would have a kids friendly movie they could tie in with their line, and what they got was a horrifying monster that would scare children and cost them a *lot* of money in revenue.
McDonalds only had a rough cut of the film to go on when they signed the deal, and they had assurances made, but these ended up bringing broken in their eyes, because Burton made his gothic masterpiece. Remember, at this time, the original 1989 movie was thought of as for kids, so McDonalds, in fairness, had a lot of faith the sequel would be very child friendly. Burton, in his own words, never intended either movie for kids, so was angry it was being pushed by WB as a movie for them.
Families complained to McDonalds, even so far as varying Christian organisations really lambasting McDonalds asking why such an organisation would push this movie as a family kid friendly tie in (remember, they were associated via promotion now), and long story short, McDonalds was fricking furious. As in, holeeeeee sheeeet furious.
They made a lawsuit, and threatened to pull a lot of funding and cause a lot of issues for them, which is why Burton refused to do Batman 3, and they made it very comic and toy orientated instead.
TLDR- McDonalds got shown a rough version, signed up after being told it was a kids film, only for BR to be anything but, and they got a lot of shit from families for it. So basically destroyed the Batman franchise for a decade. Not really Maccy Ds fault, but still sucked.