Before Marvel created its cinematic universe and DC launched and relaunched its own, both publishers were floundering in the world of cinema. Sometimes a Spider-Man or a Batman Begins would come out, but other times, embarrassingly, they had to settle for Elektra or… Catwoman. It’s hard to forget that movie, which cost 100 million dollars in the hands of a certain Pitof (whose career as a Hollywood director ended right there), starred Halle Berry, and destroyed everything it touched. Nothing good came out of Catwoman. In fact, it even ended the video game studio that created Croc!
I thought I saw a sweet little kitten
Not only did critics hate Catwoman: it won the Razzies for worst movie, worst director, worst screenplay, and worst actress. It was so deserved that Berry personally went to collect the award (although years later she admitted that she set it on fire after the ceremony). It was not in vain: the movie literally invented everything related to the character, including her own name. Catwoman was no longer Selina Kyle, but a certain Patience Phillips, of whom no one ever heard again. No one ever understood DC’s motivation for approving such nonsense, but there it remains, as an unavoidable piece of the path not to follow in superhero cinema.
But of course, in 2003, while they were still preparing for the premiere, no one imagined it would be a flop and, as a possible success, they started creating all kinds of promotional material, among which was, of course, a video game that was released a few days after the premiere, when everyone already knew that Catwoman was a complete failure. At least Berry saved herself from embarrassment, because her voice here is provided by the well-known voice actress Jennifer Hale (X-Men 97, DuckTales). That didn’t save the game from being burned, of course.
The game followed the story of the movie (more or less) and was a very basic action platformer that was released for PS2, GameCube, PC, and Xbox, as well as a version for Game Boy Advance, which was said to be better than the rest. But who was behind the disaster? The workers of Argonaut Games, who had made a name for themselves in the mid-90s thanks to the legendary Star Fox and who would also create the -slightly popular- mascot Croc. However, by 2004 they had been linking failures and movie-based games (such as Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, The Emperor’s New Groove, or Alien Resurrection) and the extremely low sales of Catwoman put the final nail in their coffin.
They took 8 months to make the game, put a team of 100 people at their disposal (when they normally worked in teams of 15) and the result was what it was: nobody understood it, very few people wanted to buy it after the movie’s failure and at Argonaut they were forced, after their suicidal bet, to close their doors, leaving planned games like Crash vs Spyro Racing, Transformers: Generation 2 or a new title starring Yoshi in limbo. However, the requiem lasted “only” twenty years, because this very 2025 the company has returned with the remaster of Croc: Legend of the Gobbos. In fact, all their work from now on will be to elegantly republish the titles from their existing catalog. Well, better than nothing.
As for DC, it found the light at the end of the tunnel the following year thanks to Batman Begins, and in 2006 it did the same with Superman Returns. And little by little, everyone left Catwoman behind (at least solo), until, who knows, maybe James Gunn will want to give her another chance. Hey, you never know!