Greg Weisman knows his way around DC Comics media from co-creating Young Justice with Brandon Vietti to writing the DC Showcase Green Arrow short to writing on shows like The Batman and Batman: The Brave and the Bold. Well, although Young Justice: Phantoms is in the middle of a hiatus, Weisman fans don’t need to worry about lacking any new DC content from him in February, as he’s the writer behind the animated movie Catwoman: Hunted. But why pick Selina Kyle to lead a standalone story?
That’s just what I inquired about when I spoke with Greg Weisman about Catwoman: Hunted, an anime-style flick directed by Shinsuke Terasawa. Here’s what Weisman had to say about why he decided to focus on the longtime Batman character for this entry in the DC Universe Animated Original Movies line:
Well I was pitching an anime film and I thought, ‘This is the perfect character for that.’ Years and years ago, and I haven’t watched it recently on purpose, I had loved Lupin the Third: The Castle of Cagliostro. And I thought, “This is a character that could handle that weight and do it with élan and just be a lot of fun.’ And yet we could get a sort of serious undertone to it that we get a peek at here and there throughout the movie. But for the most part, we could play it like this is just great fun, Selina’s having great fun, so the audience is free to have great fun. And then if every once in a while the true motivations behind what Selina is doing peek out. That just gives it a little more heft, a little more depth, but it doesn’t change the great thrill ride we’re on. So she just seemed like a perfect character for that, and then I’ve had a crush on Selina since I was 10.
While there was a live-action Catwoman movie released in 2004, Halle Berry was playing an original character named Patience Phillips rather than the traditional Selina Kyle. So in the 82 years since Selina debuted in the pages of Batman #1, this marks the first time that Selina has led her own movie. It’s about time! For Greg Weisman, it was the combination of being infatuated with Catwoman since he was a kid and feeling that she was the right kind of character to fit with the tone of the tale he’d already settled on that led to Catwoman: Hunted coming into existence.
This Warner Bros. Home Entertainment offering sees Catwoman stealing a priceless jewel, which subsequently sees her not only being pursued by a powerful organization of colorful criminals, but also puts her on Interpol’s radar. Catwoman: Hunted’s title character is voiced by Dynasty actress Elizabeth Gillies, and she’s joined by Stephanie Beatriz as Batwoman, Jonathan Banks as Black Mask, Lauren Cohan as Julia Pennyworth, Keith David as Tobias Whale, Jonathan Frakes as King Faraday and Boss Moxie, Kirby Howell-Baptiste as Barbara Minerva/Cheetah and Kelly Hu as Cheshire, among others. Shinsuke Terasawa directed the feature.
Catwoman: Hunted arrives on February 8. Don’t forget to keep checking back with CinemaBlend for more coverage on the animated movie, as well as look through our upcoming DC movies guide to learn what’s coming down the live-action pipeline.
