Batman franchise media Romero as the Joker, Burgess Meredith as the Penguin, Frank Gorshin as the Riddler, and Lee Meriweather as Catwoman. In 1999, Tim McCanlies wrote a pilot script and series bible for a planned series called "Bruce Wayne" to be produced by Tollin/Robbins Productions. Taking place in his teenage years, the series would cover his passage into young adulthood, training, and development into becoming Batman. Other characters would include Alfred, Sergeant Jim Gordon, law school student Harvey Dent, and a seductive young Selina Kyle. Planned to run for five to six seasons, it would show how he acquired his martial arts
Burgess Meredith on the show in a starring role. In his first appearance in 1959, "Time Enough at Last", he portrayed a henpecked bookworm who finds himself the sole survivor of an unspecified apocalypse which leads him to contemplate suicide until he discovers the ruins of the library. In 1961's "Mr. Dingle, the Strong", Meredith played the title character, a timid weakling who receives superhuman strength from an extraterrestrial experiment in human nature. Also that year in "The Obsolete Man", Meredith portrayed a librarian sentenced to death in a dystopic totalitarian society. Lastly, in 1963's "Printer's Devil", Meredith portrayed the Devil himself.