The Death Of "Superman Lives"

Between 1987's Superman IV: The Quest For Peace and 2006's Superman Returns, there were several unsuccessful attempts to create another live-action Superman movie. In the late 90's, filmmaker Tim Burton was going to make one called Superman Lives (originally Superman Reborn) with Nicolas Cage in the titular role. Jon Peters was producing, and both Kevin Smith and Wesley Strick were hired to write scripts. I was probably eleven or twelve years old at the time this movie was in pre-production, and I remember my friends and I talking about it at school during lunch or recess or whatever. I remember I thought it was weird that Nicolas Cage was playing Superman, but being a big fan of Tim Burton's Batman and Batman Returns, and a fan of The Death Of Superman storyline (I never read the comics, but I had read the novel when I was younger), I was interested in the movie.

The movie never ended up getting made, but if it had, it would have been the weirdest Superman movie ever made. Now all that exists instead is various artifacts of the production. There is Smith's screenplay, concept art for the movie, some photos of costumes, including ones of Cage actually wearing them. The costumes kind of resemble the the style of the Burton era Batman costumes, with the rubber sculpted muscles. Here are a couple of photos.

There are also stories, like the wildly entertaining one Kevin Smith tells about his experience working on the movie, specifically working with Jon Peters, who wanted, among other things, a flightless Superman, a giant spider, and Brainiac fighting polar bears. These artifacts are pretty much all that exists, and they're scattered across the internet.

Jon Schnepp has been collecting all of these artifacts for years, and if it gets funded, will be working on a documentary called The Death Of "Superman Lives": What Happened? which compiles all of these little bits into one place for people to see. Besides that, he will be interviewing as many people as he can who were involved in the movie, including everyone I named in the first paragraph of this post. Although there have been stories about what Peters wanted in the movie, it could be really interesting to hear his thoughts coming straight from the man himself. I'd also love to hear whatever Burton and Cage have to say about the movie. Burton heard about this documentary recently and said that it "might be more interesting" than the actual finished movie would have been. I imagine Cage would have a lot to say too, considering he loves the character of Superman. He even named his son Kal-El, which is Superman's Kryptonian name.

Schnepp set up a Kickstarter page for funding the documentary, so check that out if it's something you'd like to help fund. There are currently 36 days left until the deadline, and it's funded a little over halfway. There's also a stretch goal of another $50k, and if that is reached, Schnepp also wants to film scenes from the script the way he thinks Burton would have in 1998, which could be fascinating. There's a video introduction for the Kickstarter which you can watch on the page, or watch below.