The Michelle Pfeiffer ‘Catwoman’ Movie Didn’t Work Out Because of ‘Batman Forever’
Catwoman has appeared in many versions of Gotham City over the years. But few iterations have been as noteworthy as Michelle Pfeiffer’s version in Batman Returns. The popularity of her performance and the movie itself to a deal for her to star in a spin-off movie. Unfortunately for her, Hollywood is a fickle place, and those plans were thrown out after the audience’s reaction to Batman Forever.
Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman was one of the few bright spots in ‘Batman Returns’
Pfeiffer might have played a different role in the movie without the intervention of Michael Keaton. But you wouldn’t know that she wasn’t the first choice to be Catwoman judging from how well she inhabited the role of Selina Kyle and her alter ego.
Batman Returns received a divisive reception at the time, but almost everyone could agree that Pfeiffer absolutely killed it. It would’ve been so easy for all of her character work to be obscured by the eye-catching latex suit. While sex appeal is an important aspect of Catwoman, Pfeiffer also brought a level of intelligence, pathos, and genuine humanity to the part that helped to make the relationship between her and Batman work. (It helped that she and Keaton used to date prior to production.)
She fully committed to doing whatever it took to prepare for the role. She worked with fight choreographer and movement teacher Anthony Delongis to learn how to wield the whip and do her own stunts. And according to her Instagram, she’s still got it. She even put a real live bird in her mouth during one scene.
The gothic tone of Batman Returns was more off-putting to theatergoers than the previous Batman. But it still made over $266 million, setting the stage for Pfeiffer to return to the role in some form.
The promised Catwoman movie didn’t happen because of ‘Batman Forever’
As explained on Den of Geek, Pfeiffer was left out of the plot for Batman Forever because Tim Burton and screenwriter Daniel Waters were working on a script for a standalone Catwoman film. A draft of the screenplay was sent to Warner Bros. in 1995, sending an amnesiac Selina Kyle to a town called Oasisburg with a satirical gaze towards alleged heroes.
“What Gotham City is to New York, Oasisburg is to Las Vegas-Los Angeles-Palm Springs. [It’s a] resort area in the middle of the desert,” Waters told Film Review magazine that year. “It’s run by superheroes, and the movie has great fun at making fun at the whole male superhero mythos. Then they end up being not very good at all deep down, and she’s got to go back to that whole Catwoman thing”.
The day he delivered the script to the studio was the same day Batman Forever was released in theaters. It didn’t matter that the movie was generally hated. The campier style drew in a bigger audience than the predecessor, raking in $336 million at the box office. Suddenly, Warner Bros. lost their interest in Burton’s idea for the movie, and everyone soon backed away from the project.
Catwoman has been played by other talented actors to varying levels of success
Catwoman eventually made her way back to the big screen again, just not in the way anyone expected.
The 2004 movie starring Halle Berry was reviled upon release. It became a box office bomb and won five Razzie awards, including Worst Picture and Worst Actress.
The character was in better hands with Christopher Nolan, who brought her back into the fold in The Dark Knight Rises, this time with Anne Hathaway putting on the catsuit. Hathaway did well with the role, although this version of Catwoman was less warm-blooded than Pfeiffer’s. (That probably has more to do with the different directors than the actors.)
Sensuality was back on the menu when Zoe Kravitz played her in The Batman. Her take on the character was more grounded in line with writer-director Matt Reeves’ vision, digging deeper into her backstory and sense of self than any other filmed version of Catwoman before and developing a relationship with the Caped Crusader himself.
