Twilight star Robert Pattinson isn’t the only new face headed to Gotham City. Zoe Kravitz (Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, Big Little Lies) has been cast as Selina Kyle, better known to superhero fans as Catwoman, in director Matthew Reeves’ The Batman, The Wrap reports.
In The Batman, Kravitz joins Pattinson, who will play the caped crusader himself, as well as Jeffrey Wright (Westworld) as Commissioner Gordon and Jonah Hill as either the Penguin or the Riddler. Reeves’ former War for the Planet of the Apes collaborator Andy Serkis is also rumored to have a part in the film.
If the news from The Wrap and other outlets holds up, The Batman will actually mark the second time that Kravitz has played Catwoman: In 2017, Kravitz voiced Selina Kyle for The Lego Batman Movie. Kravitz is no stranger to superhero films, either: The actress also voiced Mary Jane Watson in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and played young X-Men recruit Angel Salvadore in 2011’s X-Men: First Class.
The Batman is expected to enter production later this year or early next year in anticipation of a July 25, 2021, release. While The Batman will reboot the theatrical Batman franchise, which stalled out after Ben Affleck hung up the cape and cowl following Justice League, reports say that it won’t be an origin story. Instead, Reeves claims that The Batman will be a “noir-driven” detective yarn with deeply personal stakes, and will take Bruce Wayne beyond the comfortable confines of Gotham City.
Catwoman was last seen on the big screen in The Dark Knight Rises, in which she was portrayed by Anne Hathaway. Previous cinematic incarnations of the character came from Halle Berry, who starred in the solo movie, Catwoman, Batman Returns‘ Michelle Pfeiffer, and Lee Meriwether, who brought the leather-clad burglar to life in 1966’s Batman.
Catwoman herself first appeared in Batman No. 1, which hit newsstands in the spring of 1940, in a story written and drawn by Batman co-creators Bill Finger and Bob Kane. Originally a run-of-the-mill femme fatale, Catwoman quickly became one of Batman’s most formidable foes and his primary love interest. These days, she’s both a popular antihero on her own and plays a major supporting role in Batman’s own comics, in which she and Bruce Wayne are once again engaged to be married.
