::Interview conducted by Michael Jay::
First, the obvious question. Why Catwoman? Are you trying to pull a Chris Nolan and redeem the character after the critically panned Halle Berry film?
The Berry travesty took so many departures from existing canon that it's CINO - Catwoman In name Only. Much like Godzilla fans disowned the '97 American movie (although I actually liked that - but anyway).
Catwoman's one of Batman's longest running antagonists, with a fascinating backstory and a tremendous number of adventures on both sides of the fence over her 67 year career (she debuted in 1941, if you can believe it!). She's a morally driven thief who isn't an outright villain or a full-on good guy either - there's a huge amount of emotional depth and layers of conscience to pick apart as a character, a great supporting cast built up over the years and, most importantly, a girl who kicks ass, chews gum but isn't driven solely by the pursuit of romance. Frankly, I'm amazed nobody's done anything like this sooner!
The tone I'm aiming for here is a blend of first season Dark Angel (i.e. before it went really bad) and Nolan's Batman movies. As realistic as I can make it, basically, with an emphasis on character development over flashy heist-of-the-week plots and tacky supervillains. DC's always prided itself on its more believeable views on superheroics, so it's a trend I intend to follow - but there'll be lots of Alias-style action, don't you worry!
Was it always your intent to do a second movie or would you rather have preferred just going to series following the first screenplay?
There wasn't even going to be a screenplay originally - the first pilot I wrote a few years ago was basically a reduced version of Nine Lives, but it sank under the weight of too much set-up and not enough backstory. Having the freedom to show more of Selina's past via the flashbacks in NL meant a lot more ground was covered, and the world of Selina, Holly and the rest was more firmly established.
The second movie came out of a need for new content to keep the ideas moving - especially in the wake of this month's cancellation of the Catwoman comic book - and also the fact that there were still lots of characters for the series who weren't introduced in NL who needed to get their foot in the door. The Gotham PD officers we'd be dealing with and some of the East End characters populating the show's landscape were the main targets, so with that in mind I expanded on my ideas for two of the proposed series episodes into one bigger event.
I think the ground that NL: Caught covers will result in a stronger lead into the series proper - all the players will have had a good chunk of screentime and we can leap right into the world straight away. There's the obvious danger of giving a new fan too much to absorb straight away - and we've already seen The Feratu Chronicles fall foul of this - but by keeping the movies short I think we'll be okay.
I myself am very ignorant when it comes to the character. All I know of her is Julie Newmar, Eartha Kitt, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Halle Berry. So for the uninitiated, tell us a bit more about the character than we’ve gotten from the television and film versions of her. What liberties with the character were taken when she was adapted to the small and big screens?
Initially, Selina Kyle was a cat burglar who crossed paths with The Batman back in the 40s - the Golden Age of DC Comics, as it's known. As time went on, she morphed throughout the 60s into a more gimmicky costumed villainess (the TV series had a big hand in this), and was thankfully spared too much involvement in the cosmic stories of the late 60s when Batman reinvented itself in the 1970s.
To suit the darker, grittier tone of the book, Selina's backstory revised itself a little to make her into a more morally ambiguous cat burglar, with the now famous purple catsuit starting to develop along with a more fun-loving, independent style for Selina, but it was the Batman Returns movie and subsequent tie-in comic books and graphic novels that the modern Selina became more established.
Initially pitched as a former hooker left for dead who trained herself as a thief to escape from her wretched life, subsequent revisions (because my sweet Jethro Tull does DC love doing those) to the backstory saw Selina as a rebellious child forced onto the streets when her parents died, caught and sent to a juvenile hall for stealing only to break out and start etching a name for herself on the mean streets of Gotham City. From there, the first run of the Catwoman comic book launched (1993, I believe), and from then on she did some great business, riding high on the female empowerment kick of the mid 1990s (thank you, Buffy, Xena and Lara Croft).
Several annuals (like the excellent Year One) added fresh touches to her past - several years training under Gotham's famous Armless Master, a rivalry with professional ninja thief Hellhound, and her sister Maggie who was taken into care when their parents died. Most of these elements found their way into my version of Selina, as you'll see.
Selina played a huge role in the major DC events like Contagion (where a virus ravaged Gotham City), Cataclysm (Gotham is hit by an earthquake) and No Man's Land (where the devastated city tries to rebuild itself), and her on-off romance with both Bruce Wayne and Batman had her working alongside the heroes as often as she was scrapping with them. Sadly, some very questionable plots in the last third of the comic's run (like Selina running for Mayor, or going bonkers and turning evil) lead to a downfall in sales, and Selina was killed off in issue #93 by the assassin Deathstroke.
However! She was soon back in Darwyn Cooke and Ed Brubaker's masterful Selina's Big Score, which reinvented Selina again as a more contemporary, high class thief for hire. Selina landed a big enough paycheck to return from self-imposed exile, only to find Gotham's East End a wretched hive of scum and villainry. Deciding to appoint herself its protector, a new run of Catwoman had Selina taking on the villains of the East End (a rogue's gallery large enough to rival Batman himself!), thieving on the side to fund her activities and becoming more of a self-styled vigilante than the burglar of old.
And it's this take on Selina that I use as my starting point - I've used elements of the old Selina (namely some of the origin and, as you'll come to see, many of the bigger Batverse plots of the 80s and 90s), but my Selina is a lot more like the leather-clad, sparkling freedom fighter of the comic's second volume. There was a bigger focus on Selina's past this time round, deepening her as a character and re-introducing some excellent supporting characters like reformed junkie Holly Robinson, grizzled PI Slam Bradley and earnest Dr. Leslie Thompson.
I've made all the players a little younger to reflect the 'Year Two' approach I have - we open the NL movie with Selina's thievery career already a year old, but the events of the film take her from that life into the East End-based work of New Selina - it's a blend of the two continuities, I guess.
Nine Lives is a project I’d heard about for nearly two years before the first movie was released. Why such a long delay in getting things going writing wise?
Because of the three other VS that I run! Somewhere InBetween, Faith and Slayer Academy were all going strong and there simply wasn't time to do another show as well. With all three shows set to end in 2009, the time had finally come to take some of my shelved projects back to the light, and NL was right on the list.
Was Jessica Alba always your first choice to play the title character?
Yes. I considered other people - Eliza Dushku was a frontrunner, but was a little overcast back then and probably too heavily identified with Faith by now - but there's a combination of factors behind Alba. Her time on Dark Angel showed me that she had the physical style I needed (plus also opening up lots of images and video for promotional usage), her mixed race heritage ties in with elements of her backstory, and she looked the part - petite but athletic with curly dark hair.
Modern day Alba pre-baby Alba with the blonde hair and waif-like figure almost made me recast, but I figured that by using a specific era of Alba (namely the 99-00 Dark Angel look), I'd get away with it.
And the rest of the casting?
A lot of it is still to be confirmed - I had too many Whedonverse alumni in there at one stage but a lot of that's shifted round now. Holly changed from Lauren Ambrose (Six Feet Under) to Alexz Johnson to keep the character young enough, but names like Gillian Anderson as Dr. Thompson and Mia Maestro (Alias) as Renee Montoya have stayed constant.
Looking back on the first movie, which had a bit of a quiet release at Blackster Virtual Community, what would you say were the main strengths and weaknesses of it?
Not promoting it enough! It's been out now over a year but people are still only just hearing about it, which was partly because of keeping it as a BVC exclusive and also due to my commitments to other projects. I think as a movie, it's quite obviously a backdoor pilot given the scale and pacing of the thing, but in hindsight I'm still pretty pleased with how it came out. It was a reworking of the original pilot anyway, but second time around I think I nailed the plot and dialogue a lot better, as well as the third Act and how it sets up a lot of the show.
Most casual fans know that Catwoman’s life has been intertwined with that of Bruce Wayne/Batman. How much of a presence will Batman be in this franchise, if at all?
NL was originally planned to air alongside Tony Black's Dark Knight (conceived before Nolan's movie of the same name, thank you very much), allowing us plenty of cross-continuity and the ability to feature both characters in each others series without overshadowing each other - much as Buffy and Angel managed for a short while.
With DK on the shelf for now, NL is going to focus on Selina and her own little world as much as possible. I'm building up a background plot of the Batman starting to make himself more known throughout the city - he'll start featuring more in the show as the seasons roll on to balance Selina's increasing role in his life, but Bruce Wayne will be a recurring character from the start. I'm conscious of keeping Batman's presence limited so he doesn't steal the limelight, but I've got enough plots and ideas on that theme to let me run things pretty evenly.
Off topic: what’d you think of the one-and-done series Birds of Prey?
I've honestly never seen it - I know I should, but I hear so many awful things about it I'm not sure I should bother. That had its own, alternate continuity anyway so it'd be for the heck of it only.
The Nine Lives I vdvd will be coming out soon after this interview airs. What kind of goodies can we expect for the release?
The original (and largely unaired) pilot, plus lots of background goodies on how the series was originally going to play out - casting, plots, all that kind of development stuff. Obviously nothing that'll spoil the new series, but a taste of how the show could have been. I'll also look into commentaries and/or interviews too.
Nine Lives II is tentatively set for August of 2009. Can you give us a little insight into the story? Potential villains?
This one is Renee Montoya's story. She's the main Gotham PD-based antagonist for Selina's life, so NL2 follows her arrival and initial partnership with Harvey Bullock before she crosses swords with Selina. There are lots of characters and plots within Gotham PD to get going, so NL2 gets them up and running without bogging down the following series with them.
As for Selina, she's going to be taking measures to up her efficiency and taking some big gambles to make herself the best thief in town - but that's going to lead her into Montoya's path and the inevitable fireworks will establish the first season's other main rivalry (Selina's bitter emnity with Hellhound from the first movie is the other).
Last but not least, want to give any cheap plugs for your other projects?
I'd have to say watch out for the revamped Natasha Tyreen, due out Summer 2010. I went back to the drawing board and built up the futuristic aspect that was sorely lacking from the original series, did a spot of recasting and worked out a better seasonal arc that means I honestly believe the new show will kick ass.
And then there's The Witnesses, but that's still largely under wraps as Alden [Caele] and I work on that one. Suffice to say it's going to be a wholly new take on the urban fantasy genre that shows like Buffy, Supernatural, Reaper and Torchwood do so well!
Thanks for your time, Lee. Glad to have you on the GVP team.
