Every “Batman Returns” fan worth their salt knows that following the success of Tim Burton‘s twisted Christmas classic, Warner Bros. started developing a spinoff featuring Michelle Pfeiffer’s breakout villainess Catwoman. What they probably don’t know is that Burton had some unique ideas for a superhero blockbuster, including going black and white to pay tribute to Jacques Tourneur’s iconic 1942 horror film, “Cat People.”
Daniel Waters, the screenwriter behind 1992’s “Batman Returns,” spoke about the proposed Catwoman spinoff and revealed some behind-the-scenes tidbits about both films during a recent Los Angeles screening of “Returns” on December 22 at the Egyptian. Speaking about the Catwoman film, Waters referred to it as a strange process where he and Burton were both interested in making completely different films. While Burton wanted to make an intimate drama, Waters described his take — which would have seen Selina Kyle move to a Gothamized version of Los Angeles and take on three corrupt superheroes — as a satirical take on the superhero genre.
“He wanted to do an $18 million black and white movie, like the original ‘Cat People,’ of Selina just lowkey living in a small town,” Waters said. “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. It was ‘The Boys’ before ‘The Boys.’ But he got exhausted reading my script.”
Aside from the “Catwoman” spinoff, Waters said the original draft of the “Batman Returns” screenplay contained multiple digs at the first Burton “Batman” film, a merchandising juggernaut in 1989 and a film Waters thinks “sucks.” “Batman Returns” was originally set to open on the Batman logo, which would pan out to reveal an in-universe merchandise store, with Batman making several references to exploitative merchandising during the film. However, film star Michael Keaton convinced Waters to cut the digs from the movie.
“[Michael] Keaton said, ‘This is very clever. Cut it,’” Waters recalled.
Although “Batman Returns” is now held in high esteem and is frequently regarded as one of the best films starring the iconic DC superhero, it was somewhat controversial among fans at the time for how loosely it plays with the character’s canon, including completely new backstories for both Pfeiffer’s Catwoman and Danny Devito’s The Penguin. Waters admitted that the reason behind the alterations came from a lack of research into Batman lore. He and Burton knew very little about the characters and didn’t try to be faithful to the original comic books.
“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 fuck are you doing? You’re already going off-road,” Waters continued. “Now there’s like 50 Batman movies, it’s like, ‘Hey. That was pretty interesting.’”
Mark Peikert contributed reporting.
