Halle Berry wants another crack of the whip as Catwoman.
Berry, who portrayed the lead role in the 2004 film, has recently got a taste of life behind the camera as well as in front of it for Bruised. To that end, in an age of reboots and retcons, Halle feels the time is right to return to a film project that did not get a fair shake.
Berry Wants Back in On “Catwoman” – What Went Wrong?
“The story didn’t feel quite right,” she conveyed. “I remember having the argument: ‘Why can’t Catwoman save the world like Batman and Superman do? Why is she just saving women from a face cream that cracks their face off?’ But I was just the actor for hire. I wasn’t the director. I had very little say over that.” Fresh off of her Academy Award win for Monster’s Ball, Halle had taken the role from a multitude of film offers. This made her the second woman of color to play Catwoman since Eartha Kitt in the 1966 Batman television series. However, unlike the recent casting of Zoe Kravitz in Matt Reeves’s The Batman, this wasn’t Selina Kyle.
Berry instead played artist Patience Phillips whose curiosity over her employer’s shady dealings with this cream leads to her death. She is then brought back to life in the same manner that Michelle Pfieffer‘s Selina Kyle in 1992’s Batman Returns is resurrected with similar cat-like abilities, aggressiveness, and moral ambiguity. The film goes so far as to indirectly link Kyle and Phillips’s origins together by the same source: the goddess Bast. Her main antagonist in the film was Lauren Hedare, played by Sharon Stone, while she tries to stay one step ahead of the assigned detective – and love interest – Detective Tom Lone. Although the film has become a cult classic, it was heavily panned by critics for its sharp departure from the more-popular Selina Kyle Catwoman. It was also the recipient of several Golden Rasberry awards. However, given Warner Bros. entire DC movie and TV library has been reimagined as a multiverse, not only is Catwoman considered canon, but Berry’s desire may not be outside the realm of possibility.
“I would love to direct Catwoman,” Halle confesses. “If I can get a hold of that now, knowing what I know, having this experience and reimagine that world the way I reimagined [Bruised.] I would have Catwoman saving the world like most male superheroes do, and not just saving women from their faces cracking off. You know, I would make the stakes a lot higher. I think make it more inclusive of both men and women.”
As to whether Berry succeeds in giving Patience Phillips – or another version of Catwoman, since she did not specify if she desired to get back into the leathers –Â another of her nine lives onscreen, time will tell.
Official Source – Halle Berry Wants to Remake Catwoman (comicbook.com)
