Back in the 1990s, Warner Bros. was desperately trying to resurrect Superman on the big screen and was doing so with producer Jon Peters. The first two attempts were with screenwriters Jonathan Lemkin and Gregory Poirer, both of which were rejected by the studio. Then Kevin Smith entered and things picked up speed, with Tim Burton ultimately hired to direct what was being called Superman Lives and Nicolas Cage pegged to star in the dual role of Superman and Clark Kent. On film, the “unmaking” of this project is chronicled in the documentary The Death of Superman Lives: What Happened? — written and directed by the late Jon Schnepp and produced by Holly Payne — while in print you can read all about it in the new Superman oral history book, Voices from Krypton, from which the following excerpt is taken.
HOLLY PAYNE (producer, The Death of Superman Lives: What Happened?): This project was a hundred percent Jon’s obsession. For years he had been collecting whatever he could find on the Internet and putting images of concept art into a folder on his desktop. Any time an alert came up, he would just file it away. For him it wasn’t a project in the beginning, it was more like a curiosity, wondering what different things would have been. Later it was suggested to him that he should do a documentary, but he said he didn’t do them. He said, “I’m a director, I do videos, I do live-action, I do animation, I’m not a documentary director,” which is when I came in. I said, “Why don’t we do documentaries? You have more knowledge on this subject than probably anybody. It’s a subject that hits on all kinds of levels: It’s moviemaking, it’s Superman, it’s cult favorite Nicolas Cage, it’s Tim Burton — it’s all of these things kind of coming together that you can’t imagine what it was going to be. Why not explore that for people and explore it for ourselves?” So we went on that journey and then we started crowd-funding the project, which is when we realized, “Oh my God, there’s hundreds of thousands of people out there who want to know what happened.” We started the process of doing interviews, and when Tim Burton came on board and we got his interview, all the other people started to say yes. That definitely opened the floodgates for sure.
A mind-blowing experience for both Payne and Schnepp was when they traveled to England to interview Burton and were given a USB drive containing 45 minutes of footage of Burton and Nicolas Cage engaged in conversation about the Superman Lives project.
HOLLY PAYNE: We watched it in our little London Airbnb with our jaws on the floor, because it was Tim and Nick, who are both fringe in their own right, talking about this beloved character — not just Superman, but really going into it about Clark Kent. And the two of them are spitballing what their ideas are about the characters. A lot of it is in the film of course, but it was an opportunity to watch their process.
JON SCHNEPP (writer/director, The Death of Superman Lives: What Happened?): I thought the concept designs for the Superman Lives project were really pushing the boundaries of what had been acceptable in the filmed versions of Superman or even the comic books, because he was like an electrical being at the time. Before that, he died and came back with a weird silver outfit and he had long hair. So Superman’s always changed and in comic books characters die and they come back constantly. Ever since Marv Wolfman exploded the universe with Crisis on Infinite Earths, they realized rebooting the characters in general was probably a pretty good idea. At first it was every 25 years, then every 10 years and now it’s every six years. It makes sense because you’ve got to refresh the genre. I grew up reading comics and I’ve gotten all these different versions of the Superman character in comic books. People who don’t read comics, which is the masses in general, and just watch TV or go to movies, they know Smallville or Superman Returns or Man of Steel. So they come back to it and say, “Hey, where’s my Superman,” so I kind of get the idea of keeping something the same, but you also have to refresh the genre.
I look at movies and television as an Elseworld where you can take risks and try something different. If it fails, you try again. It doesn’t have to hit it out of the park, but of course you want it to because it’s a business. I think that’s where Superman Lives comes into play. For myself, it was something very different. They had original characters as in real-life people like Tim Burton, Nicolas Cage and Kevin Smith — all of these different talented people attached to this property that they’re trying to reboot. Since Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, the property was dead and they were trying to reboot it. So of course Jon Peters got the rights; he’d already rebooted Batman where you had Jack Nicholson playing the Joker. You look at it now and it seems a little bit more comical, but back then that was cutting edge. Moviemaking is taking risks, and the people involved with Superman Lives were taking risks. When you go outside of the bubble, then you’re in the business world where taking risks is scary and Warner Bros. was losing money with a lot of their other films at the time. Taking risks with Tim Burton and Nicolas Cage and a big $300-million budget was something that made them nervous.
MARK MILLAR (writer, Superman: Red Son): Don’t laugh, but I thought Nic Cage was an interesting idea. I hated Dean Cain so much and thought he looked, acted and sounded more unlike Superman than Teri Hatcher. Compared to Cain, Cage actually is Superman, and the fact that he’s an Oscar-winning actor would, I think, bring some much-needed dignity after the TV show. He doesn’t look like Superman, granted, but anyone can look like a superhero with the right wig, make-up, special effects, etc. If I could choose anyone, I think I’d opt for Daniel Day-Lewis. Being Irish shouldn’t prevent him from tackling such an all-American role. I mean, Superman’s from Krypton, isn’t he?
ROB O’CONNOR (co-host, All Star Superfan podcast): I am foremost a Superman Lives apologist! While many fans thank goodness that film never saw the light of day, Jon Schnepp’s wonderful documentary turned me around on the idea and I can’t help wondering if it might have been fun to have had a curious ’90s-tastic Tim Burton Kryptonian toybox with Nicolas Cage still in his Hollywood Heavyweight prime. The assumption has always been that Burton would just make Superman into Batman, but the documentary paints a very different portrait of the story he wanted to tell — that of an outsider trying to discover his origins and his place in the world while also trying to save it!
Even if it had been disastrous (a la Batman & Robin), I feel like it might have forced Warners to reassess how they approach the character in mainstream movies and perhaps we might have had a more focused, truer modern Superman trilogy by now (a la Nolan’s Dark Knight films following Batman & Robin) instead of the disappointing half-measures and false starts we keep getting. I am one of those weirdos who actually thinks the Superman Lives costume (the traditional blue, red and yellow one in photos that surfaced relatively recently) looks quite a bit better than the eventual Superman Returns one, and I would love to see Cage finally appear in some sort of multiverse shenanigans at some point in the future.
HOLLY PAYNE: I don’t think Jon or I had any sort of preconceived negative feeling about the idea of Superman Lives being a disaster or a bullet that was dodged, which seems to be the consensus. Coming at it from that perspective, we weren’t going at it with a negative bent, we just wanted to explore it.
JON SCHNEPP: Sometimes the interest in the “what if” is stronger than the actual final product, because it fills your mind with the possibilities of what could have been. That’s something that interested me when I saw the concept art for Superman Lives — amazing, strange designs, cosmic ideas, creatures, aliens, Superman with a strange metal “S.” All these things interested me and I wanted to find out why it never got made.
SUPERVOID CINEMA (film historians): Warners was approached by Nicolas Cage’s people with word that the actor was willing to offer his services as Lex Luthor or the Man of Steel himself. Cage was said to have been enamored with Smith’s first draft, particularly the fan service and the fact that Smith was a comic book reader who wasn’t ignorant to Superman’s previous 60-year history and didn’t act like the material was beneath him.
JON PETERS (producer, unfilmed Superman Lives): Nic Cage reminded me of Michael Keaton. They both weren’t the handsome guys, but both had this tremendous gift as an actor.
NICOLAS CAGE (actor, “Clark Kent/Superman,” unfilmed Superman Lives): I’d never worked with Tim Burton. I’ve been a fan of his movies, though. I liked Ed Wood immensely. He’s also written some very tender stories that are unique and usually deal with feeling like the outside, so I knew that he was the perfect choice for the human aspects of the Superman story… which are really the only reasons why I wanted to make this movie.
KEVIN SMITH (writer, unfilmed Superman Lives): Now when you think about if somebody was like, “Would you like to see a Nic Cage Superman movie?” I’d be like, “Yes, take all my money, because I’m going to see what that looks like.”
NICOLAS CAGE: I came on board the Superman project because I wanted to say something to children. And I know Superman appeals to all age groups, but it comes from the child’s universe. I remember what I felt like as a child in school being teased. And if there’s one kid out there who’s being called a weirdo, or a freak, or something, and he goes home, and he’s just not having a good day in his life, and his life at school is hell — if he sees Superman and he says, “Well, Superman is a weirdo. He’s considered different. Maybe I’m Superman,” that’s enough for me to feel good about making the movie. That was the vision I got from it. And I think Tim Burton is the perfect director to do that.
TIM BURTON: The great thing about Nic was that he was a fan of the comics, but he also was a fan of the underpinnings and the psychology of it all. So that’s, again, what’s exciting. He understood both sides of it.
NICOLAS CAGE: Superman is a great story. It’s one of those phenomena that operates on so many different levels that still haven’t been explored. One of the things I like about Superman is the notion of nurture versus nature. Is he more Kryptonian, or is he more the Kents, his adopted parents? These are big issues that we were thinking about, like genetics and scientific things of that nature. So Superman is a remarkable achievement. These two guys [Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster] were considered nerds, who were from Canada, they wore glasses, which back in the ’30s was a big deal. These two guys who were oppressed invented the alter ego concept of being a super man. And everybody said, “Oh, don’t do it, it’s ridiculous.” They knew they had gold, and they held on to it for four years. And then as soon as it came out, it was an overnight sensation. So there’s something there. And I saw it for me as an opportunity to reach a lot of kids around the world and say something positive.
LORENZO DI BONAVENTURA (executive in charge of unfilmed Superman Lives): I think Tim looks at these things slightly off-center. I mean, if you think about Michael Keaton, it’s not the guy you would have thought of casting as Batman. And yet when you saw it, it was great. And I think when we first heard the Nic Cage idea, we were both intrigued and also going, “Well, that wasn’t really the way we were thinking of it exactly.”
Order your copy of Voices from Krypton: The Unofficial, Unauthorized Oral History of Superman by clicking HERE.