2024 is the 20th anniversary of Catwoman and the movie has neither aged particularly well (which is ironic given its premise) nor gained many fans over the past two decades.
Despite that, Halle Berry has been embracing the critical and commercial flop both in recent interviews and on social media. We're not entirely sure why as Catwoman originally debuted to overwhelmingly negative reviews and a disappointing $82.4 million box office haul; needless to say, a sequel or revival isn't going to happen.
Cinemablend recently caught up with Catwoman director Pitof and asked whether there was ever a version of the 2004 movie which featured a cameo appearance from Batman, something you'd imagine would have helped its box office prospects.
"No, because it was the opening deal. We wanted Catwoman out of Batman's hand," the filmmaker explained. "We wanted to start something fresh. There were no other characters from the DC comics to bring, because otherwise you will bring something else. The thing was really to start something fresh and new with Catwoman, and then build new villains."
"So here, the whole thing was cosmetics," Pitof added. "The villain was the cosmetics industry. It was more of a concept than one villain."
Despite attempting to approach the source material in a new way, Pitof admitted that when he reached the editing room, Catwoman simply did not come together in the way he'd envisioned.
"After the shoot, when we put the movie together, it didn't work because so much [had] changed during shooting. The pieces were not really fitting together," he said. "We had to rethink completely the whole edit, inverting scenes and adding new scenes. And we had a 10 day reshoot a month before release date! Which is insane! To fix all the little problems the script had."
"I never had the option to have a director’s cut. It was more of, 'Okay, how can we fix it?'" Pitof continued. "I would say the problem of the movie was the script. The script, we all know, had been rewritten a thousand times. When we started the movie at the shoot, the script was not finished."
"We still kept writing the script while editing. So if I had six months [of additional time], I would've put six months before production. Not after!"
Catwoman had been portrayed by Michelle Pfeiffer over a decade earlier in Batman Returns and, after this 2004 effort, was shelved until returning in 2012's The Dark Knight Rises courtesy of Anne Hathaway. The anti-hero never showed up in the DCEU but was played by Zoë Kravitz in The Batman.
Do you think Catwoman deserves to be celebrated two decades on? Let us know your thoughts in the usual place.