Daniel Waters, the screenwriter behind 1992’s Batman Returns, said the proposed “Catwoman” spinoff from that film had two very different takes.
Waters spoke during a December 22 Los Angeles screening of Batman Returns at the Egyptian Theater.
Director Tim Burton wanted “Catwoman” to be an intimate drama shot in black and white to pay tribute to Jacques Tourneur’s iconic 1942 horror film, Cat People.
On the other hand, Waters wanted a satirical take wherein Catwoman moves to Los Angeles and takes on three corrupt superheroes.
“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.”
Waters also spilled that the original draft of Batman Returns contained multiple digs at the first Burton Batman film from 1989, which Waters candidly admitted “sucks.”
The film’s star, Michael Keaton, convinced Waters to trim the jibes.
“[Michael] Keaton said, ‘This is very clever. Cut it,’” Waters recalled.
Waters also admitted that the changes to the Batman canon in the film came from a lack of research into Batman. He and Burton 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.”
He added, “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.’”
