Halle Berry in the only “Catwoman” film to date
Photo: Warner Bros. All rights reserved.
Until Christopher Nolan got his hands on the material, “Batman Returns” was the best film in the long-running Bat-series. The world had accepted Michael Keaton as the Caped Crusader the first time around after initial doubts, and Danny DeVito and Michelle Pfeiffer were perfect as The Penguin and Catwoman.
The film ends with the Penguin dead, but Catwoman still alive, having lost eight of her nine lives. This was the perfect starting point for a spin-off film about Catwoman. But back then, studios weren’t thinking in terms of “cinematic universes.”
Catwoman almost destroyed Halle Berry’s career
When they finally got around to making a Catwoman movie a dozen years later, they dropped Pfeiffer and started over with Halle Berry. She had won the Best Actress award two years earlier and was at the height of her fame, but the film flopped and sent her down a few notches in Hollywood.
When she was named Worst Actress at the Razzie Awards, she had the humor to accept the award in person.
More epic fails in film history
“First of all, I want to thank Warner Brothers,” she said, “for putting me in this shitty, goddamn movie. This was exactly what my career needed! I was at the top, and then Catwoman just brought me back down to earth. I love it! It’s hard to be at the top. It’s much better to be at the bottom.”
All of this could have been avoided if they had stuck with a Catwoman that everyone loves and not waited 12 damn years to give her a movie.
This translated text comes from the list “The 50 Worst Decisions in Movie History” our colleagues from the USA