In 2004, DC and Warner Bros. released ‘Catwoman‘ on the world and it quite promptly tanked. The movie had multiple screenwriters who are attached to it, but one writer, John Rogers (‘Transformers,’ ‘Young Justice’), has been quite vocal about what a “s- movie” it was. Not only that, but he feels this Halle Berry starring film has “zero cultural relevance.”
This is pretty on point with what both Berry and critics have been saying about the movie for years.
The comments came about with how much ‘Black Panther’ has received praise for cultural representation, and his own work had been brought up as well. His reasoning on why ‘Catwoman’ was snubbed was quite simple:
“As one of the credited writers of CATWOMAN, I believe I have the authority to say: because it was a s— movie dumped by the studio at the end of a style cycle, and had zero cultural relevance either in front of or behind the camera. This is a bad take. Feel shame.”
Ouch. Those are harsh words but entirely accurate as well. As one of the writers for the film, he hated being associated with the end product so much that he has “never watched the movie all the way through in one sitting” and also “skipped premiere night.”
Right off the bat when working on the script, Rogers knew there would be problems as this Catwoman was Patience Phillips and “couldn’t be Selina Kyle because of an insane rights issue.”
There are six writers credited to the film and Rogers reveals he was “fired off the movie” because he “kept arguing with notes that’d make the movie ‘very, very bad.’ Unfortunately, he would say this out loud and “at meetings.” This didn’t seem to go over well with the studio (you think?) and in retrospect, you have to wonder if any of those executives who didn’t like his feedback might have regretted not listening.
I’m pretty sure we can also agree as to one of the few reasons anyone would even take the time to try and watch this movie these days with how many quality comic book adaptations are out there:
Do you agree with John Rogers that ‘Catwoman’ was an “s- movie”? All of these years later, is there anything which could have saved the film or should they have given up while they were ahead? Share your thoughts below!
Source: Entertainment Weekly
