What happened
British director Christopher Nolan is trying to get Cher to play Catwoman opposite Christian Bale in the next Batman film. (The Daily Telegraph)
What the commentators said
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Let’s consider some of the “many ways in which this rumor is not only stupid but blatantly wrong,” said Josh Tyler in Cinema Blend. First, the role doesn’t even exist yet, as Nolan has yet to officially agree to do the sequel to The Dark Knight. More importantly, Cher, at 62, is “grandma age,” so she should “be playing Aunt Mae, not Catwoman.”
Cher would “make a pretty cool Catwoman,” said Elisabeth Rappe in the blog Cinematical, and the Oscar winner and singer certainly fits the bill if the idea is to portray her as a “vamp in her twilight years.” But Catwoman and Batman are supposed to be contemporaries, so it’s not “ageist” to say the actress who gets the role should be closer in age to Bale.
Take this report with a grain of salt, said Rebecca Brody in eFluxMedia. The Telegraph also claims that Johnny Depp has signed on to play the Riddler, which is another clue that the British newspaper is “hallucinating.” Over in Gotham City, Batman must be having a good laugh.
There’s nothing wrong with getting a little creative with casting, said Gary Susman in Entertainment Weekly’s Popwatch blog. If Nolan agrees to do his third Batman picture, Cher might make a great Catwoman, just as Depp could be a terrific Riddler. Very few people would have named Heath Ledger as the ideal Joker for The Dark Knight, but that “certainly worked out.”
