One of the most memorable exchanges in the trailer for The Batman wasn’t penned by co-writer and director Matt Reeves. It was written by Zoe Kravitz, because she just knew her character that well.
The Batman opens March 4. The movie sees the Caped Crusader (Robert Pattinson) form an uneasy alliance with Catwoman, aka Selina Kyle (Kravitz), to help solve a web of crimes being committed by the Riddler (Paul Dano). At one point, that alliance sees Batman going back to Selina’s apartment where he makes the astute observation “You’ve got a lot of cats,” to which she replies “I have a thing about strays.” “Strays,” in this instance, refers not just to cats but, maybe, that man who is so lost and alone he dresses up as a Bat every night to fight crime. Here it is.
“The character is so well-developed in the script, and I was really excited to explore her backstory and where she comes from and the process that she goes through in terms of kind of becoming closer to what will be Catwoman,” Kravitz said at a recent press event. “It was really lovely to be able to play Selina and not have to jump straight to Catwoman. I think with these iconic characters that we all love so much, it can be overwhelming in terms of, ‘OK, now here’s Catwoman,’ and I have this wonderful opportunity to kind of slowly develop her and the audience gets to come on that journey with me.”
It’s in that deep exploration of Selina Kyle before Catwoman that the above exchange came to be.
“Certain things that are some of my favourite moments of lines in the movie, they’re yours,” co-writer/director Matt Reeves said to Kravitz at the event. “We talked a lot about the cats and we’re talking about this notion of the background that she comes from and what her life was, in essence, because she was essentially an orphan as well. That she was a stray and she was collecting cats because now she’s decided to protect strays. And so that whole conversation led to this whole idea … This is literally how this happened. I said, ‘That is so great.’ She goes ‘So I could say that, right? Something about like, you know, ‘I have a thing about strays’ and I said ‘Yeah, but how do we set that up?’ She goes ‘Oh, that’s easy. He can just say, ‘You got a lot of cats.’ I thought that is great.’”
And so it didn’t just make it into the movie, it made it into the most recent trailer. Also, you wouldn’t be wrong in assuming that an exploration of Selina before Catwoman does suggest could be more of her down the road. “What we’re really trying to do is to launch this world and if the world embraces this we have a lot of good ideas and for sure we want Selena to continue,” Reeves said.
The Batman opens March 3.