Michelle Pfeiffer was supposed to have her own solo Catwoman movie after her stint in Tim Burton’s Batman Returns, but the circumstances proved to be not in her favor at the time. There was a prepared script, but Warner Bros was no longer interested.
Years later, the studio was able to produce a new Catwoman film with Halle Berry in the lead. It was a major box-office and critical flop that the actress even won a Razzie Award for it.
Catwoman Screenwriter Reveals The Chaotic Process Of Penning The Script
Halle Berry’s Catwoman was the product of a creative team that didn’t know what direction they wanted to go. After the news that they could not get Michelle Pfeiffer back as Selina Kyle, they started from scratch and created a new backstory for the femme fatale character.
The problem was “a lot of that stuff got lost in translation” and the initial script was a hodgepodge of conflicting ideas. Screenwriter John Rogers told Inverse:
It was meant to be sort of a return to this very genre-y, grounded vengeance story and then we did none of that.
He revealed an initial draft before his own contained a scene where Catwoman smashes through a window in a department store while in a chase sequence. A mother would be seen talking about a dress that would fit her daughter, prompting Catwoman to deliver an unsolicited speech about body image. Rogers argued:
There was a lot of, ‘We have to write speeches justifying why she does this.’ I’m like, ‘Indiana Jones doesn’t do that. James Bond doesn’t do that.’
The screenwriter revealed there was even a concept of “domestic labor of housewives” and then they turned it into a “bioweapon thing.” At one point, the lead character became a veterinarian to justify her collaboration with animals. She ended up becoming a graphic designer and the movie’s plot revolved around evil makeup.
It’s not difficult to see why the franchise failed because, at this point already, the scribes did not know what to do with the character and what story they truly wanted to tell. All they wanted was to bring a Catwoman film to the big screen with no concrete purpose in mind.
Why Michelle Pfeiffer Did Not Return As Catwoman
The failure of 2004’s Catwoman could have been avoided if they only had Michelle Pfeiffer’s Selina Kyle. Director Tim Burton and screenwriter Daniel Waters drafted a script for Catwoman in 1995, the same year that Batman Forever was released.
The despised Joel Schumacher movie was a major critical flop but nonetheless a commercial feat. Warner Bros eventually lost interest in Burton’s Catwoman and so the project never got off the ground.
Since only Pfeiffer was allowed to portray Selina Kyle at the time, Halle Berry donned the name Patience Phillips, a character who was not originally in the comics.
Catwoman is available to watch on Netflix.
