This week, Neil Calloway looks at Superman movies that were planned but never shot…
When the Christopher Reeve fronted Superman films came to a juddering halt in 1987 it would be almost twenty years before Clark Kent made another appearance on the big screen.
To be fair, between Superman IV: The Quest For Peace and 2006’s under appreciated Superman Returns, Superman was rarely off the small screen, featuring in Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman from 1993 to 1997 and in Smallville from 2001-2010 (proving that Gotham wasn’t the first attempt to show the origins of a DC superhero on TV). However, its near ubiquity on television didn’t stop several attempts to return it to the big screen.
Producer Jon Peters (who had produced Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman film) spent the mid nineties attempting to bring Superman back. Originally titled Superman Reborn, Kevin Smith (such a comic book fan he named his daughter Harley Quinn) wrote a script that he retitled Superman Lives. He was instructed by Peters to include a finale of Superman fighting a giant mechanical spider, an idea later recycled for the Wild Wild West, also produced by Peters. Smith wanted Ben Affleck to play Superman, interesting given his role in Batman v Superman.
Robert Rodriguez was lined up to direct, but passed and went on to helm the Kevin Williamson penned The Faculty. Tim Burton was offered the chance to repeat his success from Batman. Smith left the production acrimoniously. When Nicolas Cage (such a comic book fan he named his son Kal-El, after Superman’s birthname) was signed up to play the lead Dan Gilroy wrote a script that featured Superman in therapy, so we’re probably looking at more Leaving Las Vegas Cage than National Treasure Cage. Despite studio time being booked, a set being built and it coming very close to production, the whole thing collapsed. It’s worth noting that Burton wrote a comic book strip called Stainboy, later turned into short animated films, about a superhero whose only power is to leave stains, that was inspired by his time connected to the unmade project. The episode is covered in last year’s documentary The Death of Superman Lives. Not scared off by attempting to remake a much-loved series, Burton would go on to make 2001’s Planet of the Apes, a film not exactly well received.
SEE ALSO: How Superman IV: The Quest For Peace Killed the Superman Franchise and Helped Close a Studio
Andrew Kevin Walker pitched Warner Bros. for an earlier take on Batman vs Superman, writing a script, with Wolfgang Petersen brought in as director. It never happened, of course, and individual films for both characters were developed, which led to Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy for Batman, but nothing for Superman.
J.J. Abrams, before he assumed his position as king of the revitalised franchise, wrote a script called Superman: Flyby, an origin story that Brett Ratner was planning to direct. Among the people approached to don Superman’s cape was James Marsden, who would go on to have a role in 2006’s Superman Returns, and Amy Adams auditioned for the role of Lois Lane, a part she would eventually take in Man of Steel. McG would replace Ratner, and Robert Downey Jr. was cast as Lex Luthor (if that had happened, it’s entirely possible that he would not have played Tony Stark).
Brett Ratner would essentially swap films with Bryan Singer; Singer left X-Men: The Last Stand to direct Superman Returns, and Ratner would take of the X-Men movie. Though Superman Returns was not unsuccessful, it didn’t capture the imagination of the public in the way hoped, and a planned sequel – announced before Returns was released – was scrapped, with the franchise not being revived until 2013’s Man of Steel.
Some of these sound interesting – Nicolas Cage as a depressed Superman would have been interesting for the character, but it’s also possible that, like Spider-Man, we’d have had several reboots before the franchise found its feet again.
SEE ALSO: The Batman Films That Were Never Made
Neil Calloway is a pub quiz extraordinaire and Top Gun obsessive. Check back here every Sunday for future instalments.
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Originally published March 20, 2016. Updated April 15, 2018.
