Beetlejuice & Superman ’78 Pinball Machines “going to go nowhere”

Chris Franchi, who was a member of the design team for Stern’s The Beatles, Munsters, Guardians of the Galaxy and Batman 66 pinball machines has revealed artwork for a proposed Superman ’78 pin, which apparently is “going to go nowhere”.

Chris Franchi – Slap Save Pinball Podcast

Chris Franchi, who was first approached by Stern three years ago to create pinball artwork for Batman 66, revealed on Slap Save Pinball Podcast 24, he had more recently been contracted by a “boutique” company to design artwork for both a Beetlejuice and Superman ’78 pinball machine, with view to them being presented to Stern as part of a proposal for new games. However, the proposals didn’t hit the mark with Stern’s production teams, so unfortunately according to Franchi, they “… will not end up on pinball machines ever, probably!”

Franchi explains, “About a year and a half ago, a — we’ll call them a “boutique” company — wanted to propose to Stern a game for Beetlejuice and a game for Superman ’78… I was contracted to do the artwork for [both of them]… both of these went through Warner Brothers. So originally Beetlejuice pretty much looked like it got the green light. Then we got to Superman and there were some stumbling blocks, and Warner Brothers was trying to work that out. In the meantime… both of these IPs were pitched to Stern as possible boutique games. The same thing that happened to Superman that happened to Beetlejuice. I’ll paraphrase George Gomez by basically saying that both of these IPs were presented to the teams at Stern and none of them were quite as passionate as George would’ve liked them to be in order to produce a really exciting game for either of these properties. Now as much as that sucks it is a very valid point. We don’t want anyone designing a game that they’re just not feeling because it is just not going to come out as good as it could if it was a property that they were really behind. So basically, because I own the artwork but I don’t own the properties, they are basically going to go nowhere.”

Keep Throwing Meatballs!

Franchi closed the podcast by commenting in determined style he was going to “keep throwing meatballs at the wall until one of them sticks”. So, make sure to keep an eye out for more quality Franchi pinball artwork heading our way sometime soon.

More Information

For more information on Stern pins which are available, call Pinball Heaven today on 01772 816 677.

You can hear the Slap Save podcast featuring Chris Franchi in full here.

And see the Chris Franchi PinGame Journal interview on YouTube here.