Well, maybe not everyone, as Waters admits a moment later. “I remember getting a hard time from comic book fans. ‘But you don’t understand, she’s a cat-burglar.’ Like, I don’t care. I made my break early that ‘This is not gonna be your daddy’s Catwoman. This is not gonna be the comics’ Catwoman.’ Tim Burton and I, we played in the field long before the internet, long before comic book tribunals told you what a comic book movie had to be. [laughs] I served at the pleasure of Tim Burton. We were making a Tim Burton fairytale movie. Oh, that happened to have Batman and Catwoman and the Penguin in it. So we had no rules.”
Nevertheless, the box office and fan reaction saw to it that the duo would not be at the helm of the next Batman film. “I think it’s like a divorce,” Waters says. “They divorced Tim Burton and gave him Catwoman in the settlement. They didn’t want us near the Batman franchise. ‘Get away from the Batman, get away.’ But they said, ‘A Catwoman movie? Everyone loved Catwoman! Everyone loved what you did with Catwoman. Michelle Pfeiffer’s game, so go off and make a Catwoman movie. If something happens out of that, great. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t.’
“Which, to me, seemed like a lot of fun. I mean, I think the project was a little doomed from the start, because I think Tim Burton and I had different visions of what a Catwoman movie should be. And I don’t know if he was really game for the whole enterprise to begin with, but Dan Waters [was like], ‘Oh my God, I get to make a Batman movie without Batman! This is a dream come true.’
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In the mean time, here is a fun nostalgia view of what at least one child thought of BATMAN RETURNS in 1992, stating it was very violent, and being shellshocked by Catwoman playing TIC TAC TOE on a man’s face..
I guess he would have gone to see the spinoff..
