7) Tim Burton’s Catwoman
Opinion is starkly divided about Batman Returns, but the one thing about the movie that everyone agreed on in 1992 was that Michelle Pfeiffer was purr-fect as Catwoman. (The pun was their’s, not mine.) The movie wisely left the door open for a Catwoman return, and it wasn’t too long before people started floating the possibility of a spinoff film for the character, featuring Pfeiffer in what would have been a welcome return in skin-tight nylon and a whip. But unfortunately, it was not meant to be.
There’s really nothing out there to tell us what the film would have been about, but considering that both Tim Burton and Batman Returns screenwriter Daniel Waters were attached, it would have surely been as much a stylistic, thematic, and narrative continuation of Returns. Pfeiffer herself was very enthusiastic to return as well, repeatedly saying in interviews that she was eager to get her cat on again.
So, what happened? In two words: Batman Forever. Firstly, Warner Bros. was less than enthusiastic about having Burton return to the Batman series after Returns made less money than the first Batman. They also didn’t love the overly dark and disturbing nature of the sequel.
When Forever came out in 1995, the much lighter Batman was a smash success, which meant anything connected to Returns, like Catwoman, was going to be less of priority. By 1996, Burton had moved on to trying to launch Superman Lives, which flamed out in such a spectacular fashion that it’s doubtful the director ever thought again about making a comic book movie.
