Tim Burton Had A Very Specific Plan For The Michelle Pfeiffer ‘Catwoman’ Spinoff That Never Came To Life

When Tim Burton famously walked away from the Batman franchise after Warner Bros. wanted him to make a more Happy Meal-friendly third film after 1992’s Batman Returns, development stopped on a Catwoman spinoff starring Michelle Pfeiffer’s now-iconic take on the classic villain.

Details have been scarce about the proposed spinoff, but Batman Returns writer Daniel Waters recently opened up about the project that was already in trouble thanks to he and Burton wanting to go in completely different directions. To the surprise of no one, Burton had a very specific vision for the spinoff that would’ve leaned into his gothic visual styles and love of classic films.

Via IndieWire:

“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 admitted that both he and Burton knew very little about the Batman comics, which landed them in hot water with hardcore fans back in the day.

“It was just two guys in a room riffing. We didn’t know shit about Batman villains,” Waters said before pointing out the irony that Batman Returns is now one of the more beloved films in the Dark Knight’s ever-growing library.

“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 f*ck are you doing You’re already going off-road,'” Waters said. “Now there’s like 50 Batman movies, it’s like, ‘Hey. That was pretty interesting.'”