The Doomed History of the Tim Burton/Nicolas Cage Superman Movie Explained

Kevin Smith was asked to write “Superman Lives”

Saga of superman is alive begins in May 1996 by nothing more than Kevin Smith. The man who became an indie darling with Clerks a few years earlier, now he was being considered as the guy who would write the screenplay for the new Superman movie. As he said in his podcast Fat Man Beyond, in May 1996 Warner Bros. contacted Smith to script what they hoped would be an epic reboot of the American icon. In their first correspondence with Smith, Warner Bros. have already outlined the key elements of the future blockbuster they wanted to see in the script, including Brainiac as the main villain and the concept of Superman losing his superpowers. Smith had been into comics all his life and couldn’t turn down an opportunity like that. The guy who made Clerks on a pile of credit cards was now going to write a very expensive Superman movie.

It’s good that Smith was the one who was assigned to look after the script. superman is alive for at the very least, this director’s fondness for stories about his time in Hollywood means the general public has taken a close look at the production of this unmade blockbuster. During their first conversation, Peters, according to Smith, established three key elements that the script had to adhere to, including Superman not wearing his usual superhero costume, he couldn’t fly, and Superman had to fight an enormous spider at the film’s climax. It was an incredibly bizarre exchange that set up restrictive creative barriers around this incarnation of Superman. However, Smith was still interested in writing Superman film, so he set to work.

Ben Affleck was going to be in the DC world before playing Batman

Eventually, Smith wrote the script and even revealed in issue #92 of Wizard: The Comics Magazine which actors he wanted to play in the film. Although some of its variants (for example, Meryl Streep And Rene Zellweger like two warring polar bears) were in jest, others like Ben Affleck like Kal-El/Superman David Hyde Pierce as an Eradicator, and Jason Mewes like Jimmy Olsen were 100% serious. Of course, despite the fact that he wrote the screenplay, Smith was not the director. superman is alive. That honor would go to Tim Burton.

Burton was chosen by the future protagonist of the film, Nicolas Cage. Hot hits like Con Air and received his first Oscar for Leaving Las VegasCage was a popular choice for the role, however, according to an April 2022 interview with Rolling Stone magazine, the actor was not thrilled with the studio’s first choice. superman is alive, Renny Harlin. According to his comments here, this is where Cage suggested that Burton be called in to direct the blockbuster instead. Given that Burton turned Batman into a money-printing license twice, Warner Bros. didn’t need to be convinced. Burton was hired to lead the feature, and audiences looked down the trunk of the mega-budget tent pole with the combined creative vision of Kevin Smith and Tim Burton.

Since this version superman is alive began to gain momentum, other key actors began to fall into place, although they were radically different from the actors that Smith had envisioned earlier in the production. According to the documentary, The Death of Superman Lives: What Happened? Burton wanted to Christopher Walken play the nefarious Brainiac until Chris Rock was secured for the role of Jimmy Olsen. The thought of Walken going head-to-head with Cage could be a treat for ages. There was also an opportunity for Michael Keaton Batman makes a cameo appearance in the script, which would be an especially interesting turn of events as it would reunite Keaton with Batman director Burton.

After Kevin Smith, Dan Gilroy joined Superman Lives.

Kevin Smith’s participation in superman is alive stopped in 1997 when Wesley Strick invited to write a new script for the film. Screenwriter Batman ReturnsStrick had a close relationship with Burton, which no doubt helped make him the ideal candidate for the project. David Hughes text The Greatest Sci-Fi Movies Never Made gives some exciting insight into this part of the production superman is aliveas in this book, it is also when the requirements John Peters became more and more eccentric and pushy, especially with the film’s art team.

How superman is alive efforts got more and more steep, screenwriter Dan Gilroy was brought in to further improve the script. thinking about superman is alive in 2014, Gilroy noted that Tim Burton’s vision for superman is alive had to be rooted in the fact that this Kryptonian superhero was unsure of his identity and how he would fit in on Earth. This would ensure that Superman could fit into the well-known tradition of outsider protagonists in Burton’s filmography. Unfortunately, despite all the effort and thought that went into this feature, Warner Bros. superman is alive.

In April 1998, Warner Bros. announced that she was concerned about the quality of the script for the film. superman is alive, not to mention his budget, and put the project on hold temporarily. This announcement noted that Nicolas Cage was still set to play Superman and that, at best, production on the blockbuster could be restarted by the fall. However, Gilroy’s recollection of the news was that Warner Bros. much more specifically stated that the film is dead. According to Gilroy, recent box office issues for Warner Bros. forced the studio to abandon a costly new take on the Superman mythos. This is despite the fact that millions of dollars had already been invested in elaborate sets, and only a few weeks were left before the start of principal photography for the entire film. All this money and effort will never materialize in the finished film.

Nicolas Cage’s career has not suffered

After all this, Nicolas Cage just continued to be Nicolas Cage and found other big budget films to gain a foothold, such as National treasure. Tim Burton, for his part, moved on to sleepy hollow and even found a way to film a big-budget blockbuster reboot in a misguided 2001 feature. planet of the apes. Producer Jon Peters eventually added his own giant spider. Wild Wild West while he would return to headlines in the 2010s, finding himself at the center of a sexual harassment lawsuit. As for Smith, in later years he occasionally tried his hand at blockbusters, namely in an unrealized approach to Green Hornetbut none of them took it.

As for Superman, well, superman is alive was an unfortunate harbinger of the character’s difficulties in making any new film. Various other attempts to reimagine this superhero, such as an early look at Batman v Superman or Superman Flyby, everything went wrong. Problems, both creative and financial, that got in the way superman is alive kept coming back to pursue this franchise. It wouldn’t have been until the 2006 movie Superman Returns that one of the most iconic superheroes of all time could once again fly over the silver screen. However, to reach this point, Superman Returns had to fly over the corpses of films like superman is alive.

As for the idea of ​​Nicolas Cage playing Superman, that concept never died. Cage always brings something so idiosyncratic to his roles, be it in Renfield, Knowing or pigthat the concept of what he would bring to the table as Superman never left the minds of geeks the world over. Unsurprisingly, as the decades passed, Cage ended up actually taking on the role of Superman, albeit in a very different capacity from the original. superman is alive project. First, Cage had to portray Superman in voice-over form in a children’s film. Teen Titans Go! To the cinema. An incredibly small role (and one of only two superheroes Cage will voice in animated children’s films in 2018 alongside Spider-Man Noir in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse), the casting allowed Cage to finally get used to the role in an extremely absurd way. Given that Teen Titans Go! it’s all about throwing everything at the wall, it’s no surprise that the program’s feature film adaptation decided to embrace the idea that Cage could finally take on the role of Superman.

Then there’s the 2023 feature Flash, who used his multiverse/time-warp shenanigans to finally bring Nicolas Cage to life as Superman, albeit for a very brief cameo. Part of the casting meant to get applause from viewers across the country, the surprise appearance was bizarrely screwed up. Flash director Andy Muschietti a few weeks before this blockbuster debuted in theaters. Presumably done to help keep the anticipation going Flashthe revelation of this cameo highlighted early on just how much the idea of ​​Nicolas Cage as Superman still holds for the general public decades after superman is alive crashed and burned. The full potential that made so many artists fall in love with this unrealized film in the 1990s still captures the imagination of people to this day. No wonder contemporary pop culture is so keen to help continue its creative legacy by presenting Nicolas Cage as various incarnations of Superman.