Catwoman should have been a slam dunk.

It was the early 2000s, and still riding high off a decade of Batman success, Warner’s executive suite gave the overdue film its blessing. It had a buzzy new director in Jean-Christophe “Pitof” Comar, known for his unorthodox, hyperreal filming style. And it had Halle Berry, a Hollywood sex symbol who’d already breathed life into another iconic comic book character as X-Men’s Storm.

With the disappointment of Joel Schumacher’s Batman films in the rearview — and the promise of a “serious” auteur poised to reboot Batman in the near future — Catwoman was poised to usher in a new era for DC.

“It was meant to be sort of a return to this very genre-y, grounded vengeance story,” screenwriter John Rogers tells Inverse. “And then we did none of that.”

Twenty years after Catwoman flopped in theaters, the team behind the worst superhero movie of the 21st century reveals how a series of simple missteps led to utter catastrophe.

I once had a panic attack in central London.

Not the best place to feel like your heart is pounding out of your chest and your vision is narrowing as the stress of work, relationships, and the early signs of a migraine start to overwhelm you all at once. But even though it was busy, crowded, and loud, there was one big benefit to feeling a surge of panic in a city: I was steps away from a movie theater.

It might seem weird, but for as long as I can remember, I’ve used scary movies as a way to de-stress.

I’ve never quite understood why watching horror movies works so effectively at reducing my stress levels. Research is sparse, but psychologists have theorized that horror movies might be a safe distraction from real-world problems or a way to transfer anxiety to another source.