Warren Beatty Secretly Revived Dick Tracy in Two Bizarre TCM Specials You Probably Missed

Remember Dick Tracy? If you were around in the summer of 1990, that bright yellow fedora was everywhere. The movie felt like a big deal at the time, riding the afterglow of Batman the year before. Toy shelves were loaded with figures, shirts, and those canary-yellow hats. But here’s the twist: while Dick Tracy did solid business, it didn’t turn into the pop-culture steamroller Disney wanted.

The 1990 moment that didn’t quite become Batman

Warren Beatty’s Dick Tracy pulled in over $100 million, which sounds great until you factor in how much Disney spent to make and market it. The fallout is infamous studio lore: Jeffrey Katzenberg wrote a memo dissecting what went wrong, which helped push him out the Disney door and eventually into co-founding DreamWorks. That memo even helped inspire the soul-baring manifesto Tom Cruise writes in Jerry Maguire. Inside baseball? Absolutely. But it explains why no sequel ever materialized despite all those yellow hats.

Beatty, the rights, and the long game

Beatty had an ownership stake in the character, and later Disney returned the rights to him. There was a catch: he had to keep generating original Dick Tracy material every so often or the rights would bounce to Tribune Media Services. Cue years of legal tug-of-war between Beatty and Tribune over what counted and who owned what. It’s dry, but it sets up the strangest chapter in this story.

The bizarre TCM specials you probably missed

To keep those rights active, TCM quietly aired two one-off curios that feel like they were made to be seen by lawyers more than audiences. They’re real, they’re odd, and they’re very Warren Beatty.

• 2010: Dick Tracy Special — A blink-and-you-missed-it program that ran at an odd hour on TCM with zero promotion. Beatty, in character as Tracy, sits for an in-character interview with Leonard Maltin. The kicker: it was shot by Emmanuel Lubezki, a cinematographer so good he’s practically a cheat code. It later surfaced online because of course it did.
• 2023: Dick Tracy Zooms In — Thirteen years later, Beatty—85 at the time and mostly out of the Hollywood grind since Rules Don’t Apply in 2016—put the hat back on for a video chat with Maltin and TCM host Ben Mankiewicz. It gets meta fast: Beatty eventually appears as himself and argues with his own creation. Tracy even trashes Beatty’s movie, calling it a...

  "musical comedy"

  …before the whole thing reveals itself as a grumpy old-cop bit about wanting Beatty to hang out with him sometimes. It ends with Tracy and Beatty going to lunch. The conceit is that Tracy’s basically ageless—over 100 and still kicking thanks to clean living. Also: Beatty still looks surprisingly great in the trench coat and fedora.

Why these exist at all

Neither special was designed to be a big audience play. They aired quietly, they’re talky and strange, and they look like the exact kind of thing you would make to legally demonstrate that, yes, original Dick Tracy content is still being made. As rights-protection schemes go, they’re kind of delightful.

So, could Dick Tracy come back?

In an era where every old brand is being dusted off, Dick Tracy still has potential. Will Beatty headline a new feature? Probably not, but never say never with him. More likely, he’s safeguarding the IP for his heirs. Honestly, I wouldn’t blink if we eventually got a pre-recorded Dick Tracy: Speaks From Beyond the Grave special just to keep the chain intact. Or maybe Beatty pops up again at 98 to grumble at himself on Zoom. Would watch.

Seen either of the TCM specials? Did they work for you as oddball canon or just fascinating legal theater? Tell me.