Once upon a time rather famously, Nicolas Cage was going to play Superman in “Superman Lives,” a new incarnation from Tim Burton in the 1990s that would have pitted the Man of Steel against the alien villain Brainiac. Burton had previously directed “Batman” and “Batman Returns,” essentially reviving the superhero genre for a modern audience, but as Cage tells Rolling Stone Magazine in a recent interview discussing his latest films, “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent,” the studio seemed to have soured on the director and the project eventually dissolved.
Cage wanted to clear things up and stated that Renny Harlin (“Die Hard 2,” “Cliffhanger“) was the studio’s original choice to direct “Superman Lives,” but the actor used his influence to instead convince them to hire Burton. Cage already had the role before a filmmaker was selected by Warners.
“What I want to go on record with is: Tim Burton did not cast me. I cast Tim Burton. They wanted Renny Harlin, and he’s a nice guy and perfectly capable. But for me, the vision I had for Kal-El was more of a Tim Burton-style presentation universe.”
However, the studio changed their minds after the release of Burton’s wacky alien invasion satire “Mars Attacks!,” a notorious flop for Warner Bros. in 1996 as it only earned $101 million globally on a budget of $70 million that went mostly to the hefty amount of practical and digital effects.
“I was a big fan of ‘Mars Attacks!.’ The studio was worried about ‘Mars Attacks!’ But they hired Tim per my request, and then they shut the whole thing down. That’s always been both a positive and a negative to me. It’s a positive in that it left the character, and what Tim and I might have gotten up to, in the realm of imagination — which is always more powerful than that is concrete. And a negative in that I think it would have been special. Is there a chance [to do this movie one day]? Who knows. I don’t know. [Laughs.] To answer your question, I don’t know.”
“Superman Lives” was put on ice as they moved their focus towards “Batman & Robin” which would kill that era of the Batman franchise until Christopher Nolan rebooted the caped crusader with “Batman Begins.” Cage ultimately moved on to other things. Burton had also wanted to make a third Batman movie with Michael Keaton only for the studio to hire Joel Schumacher to tackle “Batman Forever” instead and hired Val Kilmer to star, so it wasn’t the first time he had been rejected for a superhero project despite his previous box office success.
Would Cage be interested in playing Superman given the return of Keaton’s Batman?
“It certainly would be interesting. It certainly would be interesting. I just would have loved to have seen those giant spiders that they were talking about, and I did see some of Tim’s drawings. He’s such a gifted artist in terms of painting. They were remarkably beautiful.”
Brandon Routh and Henry Cavill would eventually take on the Superman mantle from Christopher Reeves in their respective films. The studio is potentially mulling over yet another reboot alongside other Kryptonian projects featuring black versions of the beloved hero.