Tim Burton wanted to make ‘Batman Returns’ a black-and-white version of 1942’s ‘Cat People’!
Opening up about their very different ideas for the 1992 movie, ‘Batman Returns’ screenwriter Daniel Waters has revealed its director Tim Burton wanted to make it a $18 million homage to the spooky 1940s movie ‘Cat People’.
Tim Burton wanted to make ‘Batman Returns’ an $18 million black-and-white version of 1942’s ‘Cat People’.
The ‘Batman’ director ended up producing a movie featuring Michelle Pfeiffer as Selina Kyle, who becomes Catwoman, and Michael Keaton returning as the caped crusader.
But its screenwriter Daniel Waters told Variety about the torturous process of making the 1992 movie: “(Tim) wanted to do an $18 million black-and-white movie, like the original ‘Cat People,’ of Selina just low-key living in a small town.
“And I wanted to make a ‘Batman’ movie where the metaphor was about Batman.
“So I had (Selina) 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.”
Indie Wire has reported Daniel’s idea for ‘Batman Returns’ was to also satirise the franchise built around the vigilante.
It was reportedly originally set to open on the Batman logo, which would pan out to reveal an in-universe merchandise store, with Batman making several references to exploitative merchandising during the film.
But star Michael Keaton apparently convinced Waters to cut the digs from the movie.”
Daniel admitted: “(Michael) Keaton said, ‘This is very clever. Cut it.’”
He added about the final product, which also starred Danny DeVito as Penguin: “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 (anything) about Batman villains. We didn’t really understand the whole comic book thing. I just found out DC Comics stands for Detective Comics.
“The whole thing about ‘Batman Returns’ is we got attacked by Batman fans because they thought, ‘This is only the second Batman movie, what are you doing? You’re already going off-road.
“Now there’s like 50 Batman movies, it’s like, ‘Hey. That was pretty interesting.’”
