Michelle Pfeiffer first played Catwoman in Tim Burton's 1992 movie Batman Returns. Taking some pretty significant liberties with the comic books, this version of Selina Kyle was a meek secretary who transformed into a vengeful and empowered anti-hero after a near-death experience.
The Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania star has since received widespread acclaim for her work, with the character's leather costume and Pfeiffer's feline-inspired mannerisms now considered iconic.
The response to this version of Catwoman was so positive that Warner Bros. started mulling over plans for a spin-off. Batman Returns scribe Daniel Waters was tasked with writing it and, during a recent screening of the movie at Los Angeles' Egyptian Theater, he finally revealed what the project could have looked like.
"[Burton] wanted to do an $18 million black and white movie, like the original 'Cat People,' of Selina just lowkey living in a small town," he recalls. "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 asshole superheroes," Waters explains. "It was 'The Boys' before 'The Boys.' But he got exhausted reading my script."
There's the makings of a great movie somewhere in there and it's a shame Catwoman instead starred in an ill-fated 2004 effort featuring Halle Berry. The anti-hero hasn't received her own solo project since but has been a supporting player in movies like The Dark Knight Rises and The Batman.
During the same Q&A, Waters revealed that the changes he and Burton made to the Caped Crusader in their Batman movies were a result of them not having much interest in adhering to the source material.
"It was a weird assignment in that I didn’t need to please anyone but Tim Burton. Before the internet, you didn’t have to go before a tribunal and say what you were doing - it was just two guys in a room riffing. We didn’t know shit about Batman villains," Waters said. "We didn’t really understand the whole comic book thing. I just found out DC Comics stands for Detective Comics."
"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 [frick] are you doing? You’re already going off-road,'" the writer continued. "Now there’s like 50 Batman movies, it’s like, 'Hey. That was pretty interesting.'"
Both Batman and Batman Returns are now considered classic comic book movies in the eyes of most fans, but would Pfeiffer's Catwoman movie have joined them in the list of all-time great superhero adventures on screen? Sadly, we'll never know!