Halle Berry makes light of her infamously unsuccessful Catwoman superhero film. In Tim Burton’s Batman Returns, Michelle Pfeiffer made an unforgettable performance as Selina Kyle from DC Comics. However, when Warner Bros. attempted to produce a Catwoman solo film in 2004, everything went horribly wrong.
But Pfeiffer and the original Kyle from the DC Comics weren’t in that Catwoman movie, of course. Berry was instead chosen to play Patience Phillips, a character who had never appeared in a comic book before. One of several mistakes that hurt the 2004 movie, which went on to gross $81 million and still has a dismal 8% score on Rotten Tomatoes, was trying to reinvent Catwoman as an entirely new character unrelated to the one from the Batman universe.
After over 20 years, Catwoman continues to rank near the top of lists of the worst movies ever made and the worst box office flops. Berry, though, seems to have accepted the legacy of the bad movie rather than run away from it, enabling herself to make jokes about it on Twitter. Berry recently left a cute and humorous quote tweet in response to a fan who had tweeted about their own childhood love of the movie and subsequent adult perplexity about its bad reception. Check out the conversation in the box below:
imagine mine 😂 https://t.co/7ByVZKB9Iq
— Halle Berry (@halleberry) October 10, 2022
Will Catwoman Ever Have Her Own Solo Movie?
Berry’s portrayal of Catwoman, despite its absolute failure at the box office, mercifully did not permanently bury the character. In fact, only a few years later, in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises, the Selina Kyle version returned to the big screen. Kyle’s part in this year’s Matt Reeves Caped Crusader film The Batman was perhaps even more impressive.
Zoë Kravitz’s portrayal of a nuanced and compelling Kyle in The Batman has fans asking if Kyle will eventually receive the solo film she so richly deserves. Undoubtedly, the moment seems ideal for someone to create a Catwoman story that makes the most of the character’s psychological and moral complexities (the same way they always do with Batman). And thanks to Kravitz’s compelling performance in The Batman, the correct actor appears to be in place.
But even if the chance currently appears to be there for Catwoman to get a solid standalone film, there are elements at play behind the scenes that could prevent this from occurring. As a result of recent actions by Warner Bros. Discovery, particularly their contentious cancellation of the planned Batgirl movie, the DCEU as a whole is undoubtedly operating under a cloud of mistrust. It may not be safe to draw any firm conclusions from that one action, but it doesn’t seem like the right time to be pitching a solo female superhero movie. It’s possible that the mists may clear and Catwoman will prove to have her own value apart from Batman in the future, but it’s also feasible that conservative WB personnel will view Selina Kyle as too risky and keep her bound to her more experienced male counterpart. As of right now, Berry’s Catwoman is the only time the character has been permitted to go solo on the big screen, and the movie is tragically a joke.
Source: Halle Berry/Twitter