The adult industry released two parodies inspired by DC Comics’ legendary Batman character, but the one that won AVN's newly created Best Parody - Drama award was Bluebird Films' BatfXXX. The blockbuster movie, which went into a second pressing just a few weeks after its initial release, scored a whopping 16 AVN Award nominations, and had two of its stars (and Bluebird contract performers), Madelyn Marie and Anna Lovato, featured in Europe's QX and Hot Video magazines—pretty good for a movie that changed its name from BatFux halfway through its promotion process.
"The original concept probably started around the spring of ’08," recalled director Nicolas Steele, "and [Bluebird owner] Paul [Chaplin] came up with the original concept; he wanted to do a parody. I'd never done a parody."
Chaplin, who wrote the script, also cast himself at the arch-villain, but the movie was already in production before some of the casting—most notably Madelyn Marie as Katwoman—was finalized.
"We started shooting in January of ’10, and we signed her in March," Steele told AVN. "We released it in September. Altogether, it took six months to shoot, and of course, there was a lot of post-production, especially for the CGI. We shot a lot of the movie here in our studio in the States and also in Europe. We shot for 15 or 16 days altogether, and what we did was, we would shoot and then we would cut behind it, especially with the CGI; then we'd have a final day of CGI where we could fix anything we wanted to do better or what-have-you, and get our flips in, our wire work. In other words, compared to the script we started with, it looked totally different at the end."
Working with the massive cast—which included Lovato, Marie, Tory Lane, Krissy Lynn, Isis Love, Andy San Dimas, Brooke Banner, Kristina Rose, Phoenix Marie, Breanne Benson, Bobbi Starr, Nick Manning, Mr. Pete and roughly 40 others—wasn't easy, especially in the past year's tight economy.
"I laugh because you look at what's on the screen, and you know the budgets we deal with, and there was definitely some stuff I had to deal with," Steele admitted. "At the end of the day, it was my first real experience directing a digital movie—the movie's not all digital but I'd never before taken on that much CGI, so there was a learning curve there. And I was lucky because we have our own studio, so any mistakes we made along the way, I was able to go back and reshoot them."
"I do want to thank all the cast and crew," he added. "They did a fabulous job on some unruly hours, so without them, there would have been nothing."
Pictured: Nicholas Steele and Paul Chaplin with BatfXXX cast members at the 2011 AVN Awards. Photo by Lee/EMMreport.com
This article originally ran in the March 2011 print edition of AVN magazine. AVN.com features photos of the AVN Awards winners, the stage show and the red carpet.
