The Superhero Movie Everyone Loves to Hate Surges After 22 Years

2 days ago 7

Published Mar 2, 2026, 3:00 PM EST

Rohan Naahar is a Weekend News Writer for Collider. From Francois Ozon to David Fincher, he'll watch anything once.

He has covered everything from Marvel to the Oscars, and Marvel at the Oscars. He also writes obsessively about the box office, charting the many hits and misses that are released weekly, and how their commercial performance shapes public perception. In his time at Collider, he has also helped drive diversity by writing stories about the multiple Indian film industries, with a goal of introducing audiences to a whole new world of cinema.

The worst-case-scenario for a poorly reviewed movie is to be forgotten. However, the best that it can hope for is to be remembered for the wrong reasons and potentially find a cult audience. In that regard, a superhero film that was first released in 2004 is one of the luckiest bad movies of all time. The movie was headlined by Halle Berry, who'd recently won an Academy Award for her performance in Monster's Ball and had found blockbuster success through the X-Men film franchise. On paper, the film was a safe bet, especially with the growing interest in superhero movies; this was the era of not only the X-Men series but also Sam Raimi's Spider-Man hits. However, despite the strong pedigree, it ended up bombing in theaters and earning toxic reviews. However, over two decades later, the film is witnessing a surge in interest on streaming, as it occasionally does, owing to its status as an ironic favorite.

The movie in question, in case you haven't guessed already, is Catwoman. It was directed by Pitof, a French visual-effects veteran who worked on Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Delicatessen and Luc Besson's The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc. He made his directorial debut with Vidocq, the first major feature shot entirely on high-definition video. Vidocq performed poorly at the box office and was panned by critics, which sort of set the tone for Catwoman. The superhero film also featured Benjamin Bratt, Frances Conroy, and Sharon Stone in supporting roles.

The Catwoman Character Has Always Attracted Major Stars

Released in 2004, Catwoman grossed a little more than $80 million worldwide against a reported budget of $100 million. By comparison, the two X-Men movies that Berry had starred in by then — X-Men and X2 — had grossed around $300 million and $400 million worldwide, respectively. Both movies were also critically acclaimed, which Catwoman most certainly wasn't. The Batman spin-off holds an 8% score on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, where the critics' consensus reads, "Halle Berry is the lone bright spot, but even she can't save this laughable action thriller." According to FlixPatrol, Catwoman was among the most-watched movies on the global Netflix charts over the weekend. The character was first played on the big screen by Michelle Pfeiffer in Batman Returns, later by Anne Hathaway in The Dark Knight Rises, and most recently by Zoë Kravitz in The Batman. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.