For those of you who may have missed it on the old forums, here it is again, corrected and updated. Again, it’ll be posted in installments due to length. (Apologies to those who’ve seen it before.) So pull up a chair. This is going to take a while.
[i] The Superman Movie.
The whole thing started in 1987. The Israeli producing team of Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus (who were cousins, by the way) had bought the film rights to Superman from Alexander and Ilya Salkind, the obnoxious father-son duo who made the first three films. WB gave Golan and Globus’ production company Cannon Films $40 million bucks to make Superman IV, and Golan-Globus took the money and spent it all on their other pictures. They only spent $17 million on Superman IV, chopping out key plot sequences (a grand total of 45 minutes’ worth of critical story material was excised) and gutting the FX in order to keep the costs down. Anyway, Superman IV bombed because of the hack job Golan-Globus did on it. But since they still had the rights to Superman, they decided to make a fifth film for release in 1989, with Captain America (the one with Matt Salinger and Ronny Cox) director Albert Pyun at the helm. They also planned to reuse all the edited material from Superman IV and to recast Superman with another actor (their antics on IV left Reeve outraged with them). However, Cannon fell on hard times and Golan left to make his own company, 21st Century Films (which went under in the early ‘90s—he’s since re-founded Cannon), and the rights to Superman reverted back to the Salkinds. This was when Superboy was in full swing on TV, and the Salkinds decided to restart the Superman film series using Superboy as the prequel. Hence, Superman comic scribe Cary Bates and his Superboy writing partner Mark Jones were drafted to write a script pitting Superman against Brainiac in a story set in the bottled city of Kandor. Under the working title Superman: The New Movie, this film was to have been released in 1994, with Superboy star Gerard Christopher taking over for Reeve as Superman. (To this day, the deleted footage from Superman IV remains unaccounted for.)
Well, 1993 rolled around, and WB bought all the non-comics rights to Superman lock, stock, and barrel. WB forced the Salkinds to pull Superboy from the airwaves completely so as not to interfere with the planned Lois & Clark series (which Gerard Christopher auditioned for, and was turned down because he’d played Superboy—that’s how Dean Cain got the part), and scrapped the Bates/Jones script. Deciding to base the movie on the “death and return” story from the comic books (they figured that the big sales figures the story racked up would translate into box office success), WB turned the project over to their pet producer Jon Peters—an illiterate, violence-prone wild man (I wish I was making this up, but I’m not—this is all true, every word of it) who got his start as Barbra Streisand’s hairdresser/lover and produced the Tim Burton Batman films. Peters, who hates the classic Superman in every way imaginable, set out to reinvent Superman in the “sex, killing, rock & roll, and whatever movie was a hit last weekend” style that all of his movies are based in. So he hired Jonathan Lemkin to write the script.
Lemkin’s draft had Superman dying in battle with Doomsday, but managing to impregnate Lois as he’s dying by way of Immaculate Conception. Lois is killed off later in the story, but not before giving birth to a baby who grows 21 years in three weeks’ time, and takes over as the new Superman and saves the universe from Armageddon. Lemkin’s script—which even he proudly boasted was campy and silly—was scrapped because WB thought it was too similar to Batman Forever. So Peters hired porn veteran Gregory Poirier—who scripted Peters’ Rosewood, and has since written the bomb See Spot Run and served as writer-director on the much-derided Tomcats—to start over. Poirier’s script had an angst-ridden Superman visiting a shrink in order to deal with his feelings of being an outsider and a freak by virtue of his alien heritage, ditching his red and blues for a black suit, using Kryptonian martial arts, and being killed by a Doomsday who bled kryptonite, Brainiac, the Silver Banshee, and the Parasite. WB liked the script, but when Kevin Smith was offered to be a consultant on the film, he blasted the script for its lack of respect for the source material. (Poirier took offense at Smith’s reaction, claiming that he “would never stoop to Kevin’s level by dissing another writer’s work.”) Smith made such a convincing case that WB hired him to write the film.
From Smith through Burton
And this is where things got REALLY ugly. First off, Smith was taken aback when Peters asked him, in all sincerity, “‘Kal-El’? Who’s this ‘Kal-El’ guy you keep mentioning in the script?” Then the insanity really started to take over. Peters demanded that Superman be stripped of his red and blue suit, arguing that the suit was “too pink, too f@ggy.” WB also demanded that Superman undergo a costume change, even ordering Smith to describe the soon-to-be-trashed red and blue duds as being “‘90s-style.” So Smith was forced to have Superman ditch his red and blues (which he grudgingly deemed “‘90s-style”) early on in the script and switch over to the black and silver suit from the “death of” story as his permanent gear (ironically mirroring Poirier’s earlier script). Peters also hated the FX in the 1978 Superman film with Chris Reeve, so he wanted to get rid of Superman’s ability to fly. So Smith tried to get around this by portraying Superman as a red blur while in flight, creating a sonic boom every time he took off (he took this from The Dark Knight Returns). Peters then told Smith to have Brainiac fight polar bears at the Fortress of Solitude, demanding that the film be wall-to-wall action. Smith thought it was a stupid idea, so Peters said, “Then have Brainiac fight Superman’s bodyguards!” Smith responded, “Why the hell would Superman need bodyguards?” Peters wouldn’t let up, so Smith caved in and had Brainiac fight the polar bears. Then Peters demanded that Brainiac give Luthor a hostile space dog as a gift, arguing that the movie needed a cuddly Chewbacca character that could be turned into a toy. Then, after watching Chasing Amy, Peters liked the gay black character in the film so much that he ordered Smith to make Brainiac’s robot servant L-Ron gay, asserting that the film needed a gay R2-D2 with attitude. Then Peters demanded that Superman fight a huge spider at the end of the film, which Smith refused to do—he used a “Thanagarian Snare Beast” instead. (However, Peters did manage to recycle his spider idea and use it in Wild Wild West.)
As if that wasn’t enough, WB tried to force Smith to eliminate a critical story sequence where Lois and Clark’s relationship hits a standstill during a picnic dinner at Mount Rushmore—the most acclaimed moment in the script—because they thought it ran too long and distracted from the “toys, toys, toys” mentality Peters was aiming for. Smith protested, and the studio finally gave in, allowing the scene to stay. When all was said and done, Smith’s script was severely compromised by the time it came to its second draft (and it reads that way, too), but WB liked it enough to give it the green-light. When it came time to cast Superman, Peters wanted to cast Sean Penn, because he “has the eyes of a killer and the charisma of a caged animal,” per his performance in Dead Man Walking. But when Nicolas Cage offered his services as either Luthor or Brainiac, Smith pleaded with WB to cast Cage as Superman, feeling that Cage had the gravitas to pull the role off. Peters agreed, for totally different reasons. “Being an outsider and feeling like we don’t belong is the essence of Superman,” Peters boasted, saying that Cage could play up the alien side of Supes. (In later interviews, Smith changed his story, claiming that he had suggested Cage as Brainiac and that it was Peters’ idea to cast Cage as Superman.) Smith tried to get his friend Robert Rodriguez (Desperado, Spy Kids) to direct the film, but Peters and WB saw the film as a vehicle for Tim Burton, who they hired shortly after Cage. Burton, having been given almost total creative control, hated Smith’s script because it was too faithful to the comics (Burton doesn’t read comics, and he always brags about it). So he fired Smith and trashed his script, hiring his Batman Returns crony Wesley Strick to “reinvent” Superman per Burton’s vision. All the while during Burton’s time on the project, WB promoted it by claiming it was “not the Superman you know.” (According to AICN, Akiva Goldsman of Joel Schumacher’s Batman films and Spider-Man scripter David Koepp were briefly considered for the job before Strick was chosen.)
So what was Burton’s vision? Not much different from Peters’, in fact. Burton hated the flying FX in the 1978 film, too, so he didn’t want Superman to fly. Instead, he put Superman in a Supermobile. (Seven years later, AICN revealed that Burton and Peters had also planned on having Superman teleport from place to place in lieu of flying.) He also hated the classic costume, too, hence the oddball designs he proffered in its place, all of which would have featured silver-relief versions of the ElectroSupes S-shield and armored, treaded boots similar in design to what Michael Keaton wore as Batman:
- A partially translucent suit that would allow full view of Superman’s internal organs, as reported by Cinescape in late 1997 as Burton’s plans for the film kicked into high gear. (Although word from within the Burton camp confirmed that Burton was indeed hoping to do this, the design was apparently never committed to paper—leaving some people following the project wondering if Burton was really going to use the translucent suit or if it was just a hoax. Nevertheless, Burton’s diehard fans adored the idea, praising it as total genius and the height of coolness. Superman fans, on the other hand, were left scratching their heads over it.)
- An all-black, alien-looking suit that would have resembled a “cool cross” between Edward Scissorhands, the WB movie Batman, and a Borg. (At one point, this was what Burton’s Superman would have started the film off in.)
- A metallic silver healing suit/body armor with details that would have made Superman’s body look robotic. (An action figure prototype of Nic Cage as Superman wearing body armor was made, but it looked nothing like the design as described and featured the usual red/blue/gold Superman color scheme.)
- An all-dark blue suit with a “blood-red” cape. (This would have been the standard Superman suit used in subsequent films.)
(I should probably mention that the last three of these designs were reported by Superman CINEMA and the Superman Homepage.)
As if that wasn’t enough, Burton was also opposed to the casting of Cage, who’s a diehard comic book geek and was protesting Burton’s planned changes. Even though he put on a public face of being delighted with the casting of Cage, Burton was privately trying to get Cage fired and replaced with Ralph Fiennes, and he kept trying to do so all the while he was on the film. Hulk Hogan was then approached to play Doomsday, and he immediately agreed (this was reported on the WCW/NWO site at that time by NWO spokesperson Jeff Katz). However, Burton envisioned Doomsday as being “kinda chunky” and told Hogan to gain weight for the part. Hogan blew a fuse and turned Burton down flat, so Burton had Doomsday redesigned to look like a cybernetically-enhanced Rancor (the design was shown at Fabio2’s now-defunct Superheroes at the Movies site and at former Superman comic book artist Kerry Gammill’s web site—he was one of the film’s conceptual designers) and dropped the idea of casting Hogan. Jim Carrey was briefly considered to play Brainiac—envisioned by Burton in a variety of weird forms, one of them an Independence Day rip-off (the design of which was also shown on Fabio2’s Superheroes At The Movies site) and another a green head in a glass ball balanced on a black pyramid—but Burton made a handshake deal with Tim Allen to give him the role. (Allen said to the Chicago Sun-Times, “I’ll shave my head in a second!”) Burton also made a handshake deal with Chris Rock to cast him as Jimmy Olsen, who Burton envisioned as a smart-@$$ street-punk type. (Burton had wanted to cast Marlon Wayans as Robin in Batman Returns, but WB wouldn’t let him.) In a related story, Comics2Film reported that Jack Larson, who played Jimmy on the George Reeves Superman TV show in the 1950s, expressed interest in playing Perry White because he was a huge fan of Rock, but nothing came of it. Then Burton made similar handshake arrangements with Kevin Spacey (who had previously been rumored to voice Brainiac at one point) and Cameron Diaz to cast them as Luthor and Lois, respectively. AICN reported that Barry Corbin (Northern Exposure) offered to play Perry White, but no official casting for the role was ever made public. He also intended to shoot the Metropolis exteriors in Pittsburgh, making use of the Gothic buildings there.
Meanwhile, Jon Peters saw a group of Shaolin monks performing on Jay Leno, and liked them so much that he tried to get them cast in the film. He also tried to have the Eradicator—now renamed “K” by Burton (to be voiced by Jack Nicholson, who had been previously rumored to play Luthor) and reinvented as a shapeshifting robotic Alfred to Superman’s gadget-dependent Batman (swear to God, I’m not kidding; Burton and Peters’ Superman was to be reliant on Batman-esque Kryptonian gadgets and technology, as reported by Superman CINEMA and Superman-V.com)—tote around an “Eradicator Stick,” because he saw visions of posters and toys based on it. And the Eradicator wasn’t the only computerized character to be radically reconceived; Burton planned to end the film with Luthor and Brainiac amalgamating to become a single villain called either “Luthinac” or “Lexiac”. (The concept art by Pete Von Scholly, shown at the Superman V.com site, depicted “Lexiac” as a gigantic slug-like creature with Luthor’s face.) But the most controversial thing Burton did was brag to a radio news service in Texas during an interview that he intended to play up “Superman’s darker, more murderous side” and that he hoped Cage was up to the task of portraying that aspect of Superman. Also, Michael Keaton announced to MTV that he was going to be in the film (he and Burton are pals—he only did the Batman films as a favor to Burton; he actually hated playing the role and said so to E! when Jack Frost was released), but when asked if he was going to play Batman, he said, “Not exactly.” In fact, Burton had cut Kevin Smith’s hoped-for Batman cameo out of the film, so nobody has any clue who Keaton was to play.
[Before I go any further, I should probably explain why Burton and Peters’ Superman was going to be gadget-dependent. A scoop from Ain’t It Cool News in November of 1997—believe it or not, I actually printed some of this stuff out and saved it when it first broke—discussed Burton’s plans thusly: “Burton’s master plan is to reinvent the Superman franchise with this film. Tim is aiming to change the current comics’ idea of Superman by blending his style with some of the earlier ideas in the Superman comics. Meanwhile, some Superman elements he’s completely getting rid of. Now, I’m not privy to those changes yet, but I am told he will be getting a ton of flak for doing so….” Superman CINEMA confirmed this, saying that Burton’s plan was to shave Superman down to his 1938 power levels. Which explains the Supermobile and gadgets, I suppose.]
Anyway, the Strick script—which Burton adored—was rejected by WB. (In fact, low-level WB execs—then-WB head honchos Bob Daly and Terry Semel were in total support of Burton-Peters—were calling up Kevin Smith and complaining about how Burton and Peters were screwing up the project.) So Burton hired Akiva Goldsman—one of the writers initially considered to replace Kevin Smith—to rewrite Strick’s script. Goldsman’s rewrite was rejected. Then Burton hired Ron Bass to rewrite Goldsman’s rewrite of Strick’s script. Bass’s rewrite was rejected. Then Burton hired Dan Gilroy to rewrite Bass’ rewrite of Goldsman’s rewrite of Strick’s script. For the moment, WB was appeased. Meanwhile, Burton kept changing his mind about the film’s design scheme, and was constantly ordering the art teams to change whatever it was they were doing every day and telling them they weren’t doing things the way he wanted. Cinefex Magazine ran an article about Burton’s slave-driving the art team, and concept designer Sylvain Despretz went on record as saying that the designs Burton and Peters wanted had little or nothing to do with either the comic books or with the traditional Superman image.
[However, Despretz thinks that movies based on comic books are what’s dumbing down cinema—he doesn’t believe comics deserve to be translated to film—and he said flat-out that the fans’ complaints about Burton’s attempted changes to Superman were petty and unimportant. “It’s just a movie, everything they were complaining about was inconsequential,” he claimed. So really, he and Burton-Peters were on the same page the whole time. Ditto for his fellow concept artist Rolf Mohr, who shared his lack of respect for the Superman character and stated that he went out of his way to avoid being influenced by the comics. Concept artist James Carson was even more anti-fan, asserting that if the fans don’t like WB’s intended radical changes to Superman, they should pony up the money and make their own Superman movie. Toy designers for Hasbro who were working on the film also complained about the fans, asserting that they should just get over the changes and accept them. Another designer, Brian Lawrence, justified the changes by saying that it was best to think of Burton’s Superman as a completely new character who just happened to share the same name as Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster’s creation. The only member of the art team who had any respect for the material and the fans was the aforementioned Pete Von Scholly, who openly stated that Burton and Peters were going about the project the wrong way and that it should have been turned over to fans of the comics from the start. He still feels that way, especially in light of the recent developments on the film.]
From Burton to McG
Nicolas Cage, having been fighting tooth and nail against Burton and Peters’ vision of Superman (even though he’d been putting on a happy public face about working with them), angrily demanded that he be allowed to wear the classic Superman costume and fly. So WB relented much to Burton’s dismay, ordering up a rubber Superman suit and flying FX tests. (According to Superman CINEMA, a chintzy, Sam Jones-as-Flash Gordon-type Superman suit was dished up as well, but it went over like a lead balloon.) However, when Cage tried on the rubber suit, it looked stupid. And when they stuck a long-haired wig on him, it looked even worse. And after Burton and Gilroy were finished with their rewritten script, WB looked it over and loathed it. Even worse, all of Burton and Peters’ screwing around and causing trouble resulted in the film being budgeted somewhere between $140-190 million. So, in April 1998, just weeks before the film was to start shooting, WB put the film on indefinite hold. By this time, about $30-40 million (including the pay-or-play contracts for Burton and Cage—$20 million for Cage, $5 million for Burton) had already been spent on the project, with nothing to show for it. [It’s well over $50 million now, given all the stupidity that occurred beyond this.]
It was at this point that Lorenzo DiBonaventura, a then-WB exec who was a long-time ally of Peters, joined the production and openly supported everything Burton wanted to do with Superman. It was with DiBonaventura that Burton and Peters had Gilroy rewrite the script completely, mixing and matching elements from the Strick, Goldsman, Bass, and Gilroy drafts into a single script. The end result had Jor-El inventing Brainiac, only to abandon him when Kal-El is born. Brainiac is jealous of Kal-El, so he blows up Krypton. However, Kal-El is sent to Earth, so Brainiac vows to hunt him down and kill him. Jump forward 30 years. Superman—who’s been having a full-blown sexual affair with Lois—is forced to reveal his true identity to her when she finds out that Superman’s escape rocket landed on the Kent farm. (In this script, the Kents were long dead, and Superman himself had absolutely no clue as to his origins—not even knowing about the existence of the rocket—until Lois found it.) Anyway, Brainiac comes to Earth with a kryptonite-bleeding Doomsday and merges with Lex Luthor—who in this draft was basically portrayed as the Joker in a business suit, and who also found out about Superman’s rocket landing in Smallville in this draft—to become “Lexiac.” So Lexiac tricks Superman into coming to the LexCorp tower, where Doomsday kills him in combat and runs off. (He never shows up again in this draft.) Then Lexiac seizes control of all the world’s nukes and seduces Lois…who’s pregnant with Superman’s love child!!! Meanwhile, Superman is revived by “K,” the combined, still-living essence of Jor-El and Lara. Initially powerless upon his rebirth, Superman is told by “K” that all he needs to do is have faith in himself, and so regains his powers by sheer force of will (yes, yes, I know he’s supposed to get them back by exposure to sunlight, but bear in mind what we’re dealing with here). And so Superman engages Lexiac in combat and saves the world with one second left on the nuclear clock, separating Brainiac and Luthor, who has no idea that he was possessed by Brainiac. And while Lois and Clark are undecided if they want to get married or just live together, all that matters is that they’re happy.
This was the script Burton proffered in late 1998. WB loved it, but Burton’s egotistical attitude was wearing thin on them. It came to the point where Burton started smart-mouthing them, trying to bully them into giving him his way. As such, WB finally fired him in late ‘98/early ’99. (Burton was furious over this, and tried to pin every bit of the blame for Superman Lives’ lack of progress on WB and paint himself as a total innocent in his book Burton on Burton. Needless to say, everyone knew he was lying thru his teeth, and blew him off. Burton also claimed to Howard Stern that the WB execs at one point wanted Superman to wear basketball shorts and flame-boots. Considering that he was still trying to play the total innocent, I’d say this claim is pretty suspect.) Peters and DiBonaventura—who had become Peters’ co-producer on the film—continued to polish the Gilroy draft, deleting the Lois pregnancy at WB’s behest. Meanwhile, an aspiring screenwriter/comic book geek named Alex Ford tried to talk WB out of the Peters/Burton/DiBonaventura plans for the movie, instead proposing a series of 6-7 Superman films. He went so far as to write a “Year One” script heavily based on the comic books and featuring Luthor and Metallo—posing as a superhero—as the villains. But WB, being so enamored of Peters, refused to even consider the Ford script and trashed it. Peters then tried to get Michael Bay, Brett Ratner, Steven Norrington, Shekhar Kapur, and Martin Campbell to take over as director, but they hated the script and turned the project down. So the Gilroy script was dumped in late 1999, and William Wisher was hired to start over. (Around this time, comic book writer/artist Keith Giffen tried to sell Peters and DiBonaventura on a Superman script treatment he wrote featuring Lobo as the primary villain, but was snubbed. Of course, his Superman was the classic version, which may explain why Peters and DiBonaventura blew him off.) However, with The Matrix being a big success, Peters and DiBonaventura decided that Superman should ditch his red and blue in favor of Matrix-like duds. As such, press blurbs for the new script announced that Superman would be killed off and reborn in a brand-new incarnation, and that the new script would recreate Superman “sans the tights and more Matrix-like.” Oliver Stone was then approached to direct the film from the Matrix-ized Wisher script, but he ultimately turned it down.
In the meantime, WB heads Bob Daly and Terry Semel—Peters’ best friends and staunchest supporters—jumped ship from the studio after Wild Wild West bombed, and were replaced by the equally pro-Peters team of Barry Meyer and Alan Horn. Cage got fed up with the whole thing, and finally quit in mid-2000. So Peters reportedly offered Russell Crowe $30 million to play Superman, but Crowe wasn’t interested. (And if you thought the backlash against Cage was bad, the backlash against Crowe was even worse—people were hoping Dennis Quaid would be cast as Luthor so they could root for the bad guy to win.) The Wisher script was tossed out, and Paul Attansio was then hired to rewrite the script, now retitled Superman Destruction (boy, THERE’S an ironic title). Then in July 2001, as Planet of the Apes was being released, the now-defunct Coming Attractions site reported that WB made a handshake deal with Tim Burton to rehire him to take over the film should POTA make over $150-200 million at the box office, with Dan Hill, David Nutter, Benjamin Melniker, and Michael Uslan as his producing team. (In fact, WB wanted to rehire Burton after Sleepy Hollow proved successful.) Promising Burton even more creative control than he had the last time, WB apparently offered to cast Jim Carrey as Brainiac and David Duchovny as Superman to sweeten the deal. However, POTA didn’t do the big business WB was hoping for, so Burton was given the boot again. And so Peters and DiBonaventura hired McG of Charlie’s Angels to direct the film, and McG was (a) aiming to make a Superman movie in the spirit of Charlie’s Angels and Tomb Raider and (b) had offered the role of Lois to Catherine Zeta-Jones (formerly one of Jon Peters’ many girlfriends), Cameron Diaz, and Jennifer Lopez. (This news hails from Superman CINEMA, by the way.)[/i]
