Either way you slice it Anne Hathaway was meant to wear cat ears in some fashion. Although we all know she ended up playing Catwoman in Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Rises film, Hathaway could have wound up in an entirely different action film.
Sam Raimi , the director of the first Spider-Man franchise opened up about loving what Hathaway was doing in the audition room for Feicia Hardy. The character she was auditioning for at the time Raimi was in pre-production of Spider-Man 4 was the Black Cat.
If she scored the part, and it looks like she was on her way to doing so, Hathaway would have fought alongside Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man, and we may have never seen a reboot of the series. About Hathaway’s Catwoman, Raimi said, “I didn’t get to see Batman yet, because I’ve been working nonstop on Oz, but I hear she’s great in it. I’m not surprised, because I loved what she was doing with the auditions for Spider-Man 4.”
As legend has it, Raimi couldn’t come up with a script soon enough for the studio, so Raimi was axed and replaced by Marc Webb and a whole new series was born, one that saw Andrew Garfield as Spider-Man and Emma Stone as Gwen Stacy.
It’s too bad we never got a Spider-Man 4 because Raimi said he was “very unhappy” with the third film, and would have created the last installment as “the best Spider-Man of them all.” Looks like we’ll all have to wonder what could have been for Spider-Man 4.
As for Hathaway, the two roles seem to be similar. Spider-Man’s Black Cat was the daughter of a jewel thief, while Hathaway played a jewel thief of sorts in The Dark Knight Rises . As far as cats go, we think Hathaway got the right part.