Early Catwoman costume designs

[d_osborn]

I've been curious about this for a while. Can anyone confirm that this more vintage Catwoman costume design was being considered for RETURNS? I know Burton's early art was more in the vein of what we wound up with.

Could this possibly be one of the early looks considered for Annette Bening early on?  She was cast around March/April, and dropped out of the film around June 91. I'm guessing the character design process was pretty far along by that point.

Speaking of Bening, are there any costume test shots of her as Catwoman?

[d_osborn]

Double post-- my bad!

[Catwoman]

In it's era it would have been nice.

In 1992, yea. Gimme the skintight vinyl lol

[lifesabitch]

Made me think of Batgirl, not Catwoman.

[Furstmobile]

That's just Tommy Lay putting in a figure to give a sense of scale. He did another of that interior with a blue/gray Batman running down the hall. He probably had no idea what the costume people were considering.

But if you go to the dvd and watch some stuff you can see a few the real alternate designs very briefly when they are talking about Annette Bening. The one that comes to mind is that vinyl corset with her areolae peeking out just above. All black of course.

[d_osborn]

Interesting! I need to rewatch the DVD content. It's been ages. Thanks!

[The Laughing Fish]

But if you go to the dvd and watch some stuff you can see a few the real alternate designs very briefly when they are talking about Annette Bening. The one that comes to mind is that vinyl corset with her areolae peeking out just above. All black of course.

Yeah, that concept art for Annette Bening was quite provocative, wasn't it? This was taken from the DVD feature Shadows of the Bat Part 4: Dark Side of the Knight.



Minus the cups, only the corset was carried over into the final Catsuit design.

[BatmanFurst]

But if you go to the dvd and watch some stuff you can see a few the real alternate designs very briefly when they are talking about Annette Bening. The one that comes to mind is that vinyl corset with her areolae peeking out just above. All black of course.

Yeah, that concept art for Annette Bening was quite provocative, wasn't it? This was taken from the DVD feature Shadows of the Bat Part 4: Dark Side of the Knight.



Minus the cups, only the corset was carried over into the final Catsuit design.

Every time I see the special features for Returns I'm shocked that they even considered this design for more than 2 seconds.

[The Laughing Fish]

It does look outrageous, and there's no way the studio would ever approve a Catsuit costume that exposed THAT much cleavage.

But look at it from this perspective: comics were very risque at the time, and I guess Burton and co were brainstorming for ideas as an inspiration. For example, if you look at the 1989 Catwoman mini-series, the first costume Selina Kyle wore was a gimp-looking dominatrix suit, which was given to her by her abusive pimp.



That whole idea is pretty dark. Even more so than any costume design for the movie, whether it's concept art or the film itself.

If the production team were aware of that mini-series, it wouldn't surprise me if they thought nothing they could do would come anywhere near as shocking as that. But they were able to draw the line between creating a costume for Catwoman may have been suggestive at best, but not too explicit.