4 ‘Superman’ Movies That Never Took Flight

The George Miller/”Justice League” Version
In 2007, Warner Bros. had, in a move that seems either amazingly ambitious or incredibly impetuous, attempted to launch a “Justice League” movie, just months prior to a looming Writer’s Guild strike. Armed with a script by Kieran and Michele Mulroney (“Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows“), “Mad Max” director George Miller signed on to direct, and with Joel Silver set to produce, production was scheduled to get underway (on the $200 million + production) in Australia. Despite key members of the crew already being assembled (including Peter Jackson‘s Weta Workshop, who would be designing the costumes for the new movie), the following year the film was put on hold, due to the writer’s strike and what the studio felt was a largely imperfect script. Later, the Mulroneys were once again hired to work on their script.

While the plot specifics for this “Justice League” have never been fully revealed, casting was eventually illuminated on who would play who, and D.J. Cotrona, who was seen this past spring in “G.I. Joe: Retribution,” was hired to play the Man of Steel. (Additionally, Armie Hammer was Batman, Adam Brody was The Flash and Common was The Green Lantern.) Things stalled creatively (at one point, it was suggested Miller, coming off of his experience on “Happy Feet,” would use motion capture technology either partially or in fully to bring the characters to life) and by 2010, according to Silver, the project was completely dead, with the Marvel model of introducing characters film-by-film once again cited.

Every Other Version
Hollywood is littered with the dead corpses of Supermen. From a proposed fifth movie starring Christopher Reeve that, according to writer Cary Bates, would “leapfrog over” the mostly horrible third and fourth movie and return the franchise to its former glory (never happened) to a proposed sequel to “Superman Returns” that would have featured a plot centered around the discovery of “New Krypton,” with Braniac a proposed villain (the cultural indifference towards the movie made the studio’s enthusiasm wan and Singer left for other projects). Then there was the infamous “Superman Reborn” project (mentioned above), which had Superman literally reborn and grow into adulthood during the course of the movie (good fucking lord).

Other versions included a proposed trilogy, devised by comic book author/perennial exaggerator Mark Millar and directed by “X-Men: First Class” filmmaker Matthew Vaughn (although those talks apparently didn’t get far), that would have charted Superman’s entire life cycle, from his birth on Krypton to his eventual death. In between “Superman Returns” and “Man of Steel,” a whole host of pitches were entertained, mostly by comic book writers like Mark Waid (based on his own “Superman: Birthright” arc) and Grant Morrison, who possesses superhuman intelligence and whose pitch revolved around his own “All-Star Superman” arc (in which Superman is eradicated and has mere days to live; this story was eventually brought to life in the form of a half-assed, direct-to-video animated movie). It wasn’t until the dream team of David S. Goyer and Christopher Nolan, who had been responsible for the amazing Batman trilogy, pitched their own take, that the studio finally committed to bringing back the Man of Tomorrow (today).

There’s a lot of lore out there. Will Smith was offered the role of “Superman Returns,” but turned it down. “I had already done Jim West [in ‘Wild Wild West’], and you can’t be messing up white people’s heroes in Hollywood!” he told MTV in 2008. Olivia Wilde, Mila Kunis and Kristen Stewart were up for Lois Lane before Amy Adams got the gig in “Man Of Steel.” It is rumored that in the mid aughties, Michael Bay hosted a Superman logo on his site briefly and then took it down (no one seems to have screencaps). The list goes on and on.

So what version of Superman do you wish they had followed through with (if any)? And who can start calculating the hundreds of millions of dollars that were needlessly spent developing these projects? Sound off below, faster than a speeding bullet, if you wish.

The Playlist Staff

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