It’s been revealed that Tim Burton’s infamous Batman Returns was supposed to be followed by a Michelle Pfeiffer lead Catwoman film.
During a screening event of Batman Returns, screenwriter Daniel Waters revealed that back in the 90’s he and Burton had been working on a spin-off film for Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman.
“[Tim] wanted to do a $18 million black-and-white movie,” said Waters. “And I wanted to make a Batman movie where the metaphor was about Batman. So, I had her move to a Los Angeles version of Gotham City, and it’s run by three arsehole Superheroes.”
“It was The Boys before The Boys. But [Tim] got exhausted reading my script.”
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However, neither of their visions ever came to be and Burton’s time directing the films came to an unexpected close due to the response of Batman Returns.
“The whole thing about Batman Returns is we got attacked by Batman fans because they thought, ‘this is only the second Batman movie, what the fuck are you doing? You’re already going off-road,” explained Waters. “Now there are like 50 Batman movies, it’s like ‘Hey, that was pretty interesting’’.
But if they had gotten the spin-off film off the ground, we may never have been blessed with 2004’s Catwoman starring Halle Berry.
Watch the trailer for Catwoman
The 2004 film is largely accepted as one of the worst superhero films ever made but has luckily been awful enough to make it into the its-so-bad-its-good category.
Berry’s performance took out that year’s Razzie Award for Worst Actress, where she ironically accepted the award on stage while holding her Oscar for 2002’s Monster’s Ball.
“Thank you so much,” said Berry as she pretended to fight off tears. “I never in my life thought I would be up here… I want to thank the writers, all twenty of them. Thank you for thinking this was a good idea.”
Perhaps Burton and Waters dodged a bullet?
Watch Halle Berry’s Razzie acceptance speech
