Any time creative projects are involved, egos can get bruised. And according to IndieWire, that’s what happened more than 30 years ago, when Daniel Waters, the screenwriter of Batman Returns (1992,) had artistic disagreements with Tim Burton.

At a screening of Batman Returns that Waters penned, he recounted how he wanted to turn a Catwoman spinoff project with Michelle Pfeiffer into a satirical comic book adaptation — akin to Amazon Prime’s series’ The Boys. However, Burton had a completely different idea — aspiring to create a “small town” Catwoman. 

Moreover, Waters detailed how his vision ran contrary to the acclaimed filmmaker: “He 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.” Waters continued, “And I wanted to make a Batman movie where the metaphor was about Batman. So I had her 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.”

Upon digging further, it’s not surprising that Burton was tepid about Waters’ initial drafts of the sequel, since they wove in elements that mocked Burton’s original Batman (1989). For example, the opening satirized a merchandise store selling Batman memorabilia. Furthermore, according to Water’s reminiscing, Burton wasn’t the only disapproving voice — the film’s star, Michael Keaton, allegedly quipped, “This is very clever. Cut it.” 

Beyond creative differences with Burton and Keaton, Waters discussed how displeased comic book fans were with the origin stories of both Catwoman (Michelle Pfeiffer) and The Penguin (Danny Devito) in Batman Returns. Waters said, “The whole thing about Batman Returns is we got attacked by Batman fans because they thought, ‘This is only the second Batman movie, what the fuck are you doing? You’re already going off-road.” Furthermore, Waters added, “Now there’s like 50 Batman movies, it’s like, ‘Hey. That was pretty interesting.’”

It would have been intriguing to see Waters’ unique concept in the early 90s, because now with Marvel films, satirizing and including meta elements has become overdone. But back then, it would have been refreshing and unconventional.