Perhaps the best known aborted super hero movie of all time is ‘Superman Lives’, which would have starred Nicholas Cage in the title role, been produced by Joel Silver, written by Kevin Smith and directed by Tim Burton, who helmed the first two ‘Batman’ movies. Oh and the movie would have featured a cameo appearance by Batman, with Michael Keaton allegedly returning to the role. Also, Chris Rock was cast as Jimmy Olsen.
The movie was loosely based on ‘The Death of Superman’ comic book story which had the Man of Steel apparently dying at the hands of Doomsday, a powerful creature from Krypton. But in addition to the elements from those comics, the movie would have placed Brainiac as the major bad guy, with his head coming detached and taking on a robotic spider mode (something that was later done with Mister Freeze on ‘Batman: The Animated Series’). Oh and some polar bears and a gay robot were also factors. (Like gay robots are anything new… Hello, C-3PO called and wants a word.)
But anyway, ‘Superman Lives’ got very far into production, with costumes being made, storyboards illustrated, a complete script and then… kaput. It just fell apart. Warner Brothers felt it was going to be too costly to produce the movie and the plug was pulled. Now filmmaker John Schnepp is delving into the behind-the-scenes matters of the aborted film project to uncover what was meant to be and why the project fell apart so late in the game. He even managed to wrangle in Cage, Burton and Smith to provide interviews, as well as comic scribe Grant Morrison and others who had worked on the project.
You can watch the trailer for the documentary ‘The Death Of Superman Lives: What Happened?’ below:
What do you think? Would have preferred Nicholas Cage in the role of Superman compared to Brandon Routh? Would you have liked to have seen this storyline on the big screen?
Source: Den of Geek
