CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS Producer Talks About Kevin Conroy Recording His Final Batman Performance
The upcoming DC animated film Crisis on Infinite Earths - Part 3 will feature the final performance of Kevin Conroy as Batman. The trailer for the film featured a scene that showed Conroy’s Batman facing off with Mark Hamill’s Joker.
In that scene, Batman says: "I care Joker...about Gotham. About justice. And, if it has to end, at least I go out like this...being Batman!"
Executive producer of the film Butch Lukic recently spoke to CBM and he talked about Conroy recording his final lines as Batman and shared a touching story from the booth.
Lukic said: "Originally, we obviously knew we were going to get Kevin to do Batman for this scene. We didn't know at the time and I'm not sure if he knew because it was a year away from when he passed away.
“We were making jokes about it at the time saying, 'This is your last Batman animated, blah, blah, blah,' and he was laughing and making jokes about it too."
"In hindsight, it wasn't intended to be his final performance of the character but it turned out to be that way, sadly. The lines he did were only two lines really but he wanted to stick around and do the lines for the other Batman just for fun [Laughs].
“He was having a good time with it, but we don't know if he was sick then or it happened later. Unfortunately, it wasn't intended to be his last performance but sadly now it is."
He also talked about Mark Hamill's return as The Joker, saying: "Once we told Hamill...we told him, 'Look, Kevin is doing it' and he always called us if Kevin was doing even just a couple of lines.
“He said, 'As long as Kevin is doing it, I'm all in,' and that was that. Even though he did state a couple years before that he'd retired from The Joker, he did want to do this one.
“Again, he didn't know anything as far as what Kevin's outcome was going to be. He was just doing it because it was a good end statement to Batman: The Animated Series for both of them."
It’s sad that Conroy passed away as we lost a legend, but at least we get to enjoy one more brief experience hearing him voice Batman one final time.
Crisis on Infinite Earths - Part 3 is now available on Digital and arrives on 4K UHD in limited edition SteelBook packaging and Blu-ray on July 23.