In just five months, we'll see Zoë Kravitz’s Catwoman. The countdown is truly starting to kick in, and fans couldn’t be more excited to see the Mad Max actress put her own spin on Selina Kyle a decade after Anne Hathaway’s version in The Dark Knight Rises. She’ll make her debut in the role alongside Robert Pattinson’s Bruce Wayne in Matt Reeves’ The Batman. Though as you can imagine, with playing a character as iconic as Catwoman, there’s a drove of fans watching her every move.
We’ll soon get to see a closer look at Zoë Kravitz in The Batman in a couple weeks when Warner Bros. hosts its second annual DC FanDome event, which will include a second trailer for the movie. Ahead of this, Kravitz spoke with AnOther Magazine about how she handles the fact that hardcore fans are anticipating her performance. In her words:
Because I respect them so much I chose not to think about them when making the movie. If I’m thinking about wanting everyone to like it and wanting all the fans to like it, I’m not going to actually bring a real person to life. Matt wrote a really interesting story with a complex character, and the relationships are really interesting. All I wanted to do was honor that story.
Now that’s a great way to look at it! Zoë Kravitz has somewhat ignored the DC fans out of love. With this, she won't let the enormity of the role get in her head and prevent her from truly adapting Matt Reeves’ vision for Catwoman in The Batman. Truth be told, it is his version of Batman and she trusted it, rather than listening to the millions of likely conflicting voices who might have negatively affected her experience on the film. She continued:
Sometimes with really big movies, it can feel like you’re just a puppet and part of this big machine. This felt like an independent movie in the way that there was real heart and soul and thought being put into the process and into every scene. It was incredibly collaborative. Matt’s very specific. It took him a year to make this because of COVID. We were in this bubble, really in this world, and it was an incredible experience. To spend a year of your life, and it’s very physically demanding ... I had to be in very specific shape, and there’s a pandemic going on. I’m being zipped into a catsuit every day at 7am, working 12-hour days and then coming home and working out. It was intense.
The biggest challenge associated with The Batman was likely the lengthy production schedule due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The film started shooting in January 2020 just prior to spring lockdowns and ended up pausing production up until September of that year. As Kravitz shared, she had a specific kind of shape she needed to be in to fit into the catsuit, and yet the cast and crew ended up not being on set for six months. And just a few days after The Batman resumed production, Robert Pattinson tested positive for COVID-19, which led to production being paused yet again.
The movie wrapped production this past March, with production in total ending over a year after it began. That surely could've created more time for Zoë Kravitz to get in her head about playing Catwoman and perhaps disappointing fans. So far, we’ve only seen a small glimpse of the actress in the role. It looks like the movie will get into the origins of Selina Kyle, considering her costume isn’t completely realized in the first trailer.
Expect more The Batman news on October 16 during DC FanDome and mark your calendars for the movie, which heads to theaters on March 4, 2022.
