We've heard a lot about a potential Superman trilogy from X-Men: First Class director Matthew Vaughn, and back when he was adapting Mark Millar's Kick-Ass, it looked like the comic book scribe might be somehow involved. We've since heard conflicting reports about just how far that project got before Warner Bros. went with Zack Snyder's Man of Steel, but Miller has today revealed some new details.
"Matthew Vaughn and I had talked about doing a Superman film years ago," he told The Aspiring Kryptonian. "It was around the time Kick-Ass was coming out, and it's funny, I've seen so many people say, 'Millar's pitch.' I never wrote a pitch. I had an idea of what it could be, but I never really told Matthew what it was, and Matthew never told DC what it was because he didn't know."
Vaughn was said to be "very interested" in rebooting Superman and while Millar told him that he had a "three-picture idea," DC reportedly closed the door on him being involved due to his ties to Marvel at the time.
Interestingly, while the filmmaker was just one of many directors being eyed for the gig, he imagined Daredevil star Charlie Cox playing Superman (who had previously appeared in Vaughn's Stardust). "[He] and I had a lot of chats about who could play Superman. We never really talked about story. Weirdly, his idea was really interesting, which was Charlie Cox, the guy who played Daredevil."
"Matthew had just worked with Charlie on Stardust a year or two before. He's like, 'There's just something really likable about him.' And he said, 'I know he's not big, and Superman's always big' — Charlie's only about 5'8", 5'9" or something — He says, 'But he looks a bit like the Golden Age Superman, when he's a bit more like a regular person.'"
That certainly sounds like an interesting take on the character, but Warner Bros. ultimately decided that Zack Snyder's vision was a better fit for the character, and the rest is obviously history!