Nightcrawler director Dan Gilroy wrote a script for Tim Burton's Superman Lives that nearly got filmed. He reflects...
Dan Gilroy is currently riding a wave of critical acclaim for Nightcrawlerstarring Jake Gyllenhaal, but what seems like ages ago, he wrote a draft for Tim Burton's aborted Superman Lives movie, and it's the one that probably came the closest to actual production. Closer than you thought, actually. In a new interview, he reflects a little about just how close we came to seeing a rather different take on Superman. "They pulled the plug right when we were doing camera tests...it was very far along," he says.
Admitting that it was Tim Burton's idea to keep Superman in the dark about his alien heritage for a chunk of the movie, he tells how "Kal-El was not told by Jor-El, before he got put in the little spaceship, who he was or where he came from. So poor little Kal-El, when he winds up on earth, he has no freaking idea where he came from. His biggest fear is that he's an alien. Our Superman was in therapy at the beginning of the film." It was "all about the psychological trauma" of that reveal.
Ultimately, though, it just couldn't happen because "Warner Bros was hemorrhaging. Every big movie that was coming out was bombing and failing and when it came time to step up and bankroll our script, they didn't have the financial wherewithal or desire. Which is a shame because Tim would have knocked it out of the park. And Nic Cage, oh my god! I was so ready for that."
Right. You can see some of the footage from those camera tests in this trailer for The Death of Superman Lives documentary, which can't arrive soon enough.
I've read Mr. Gilroy's 1998 Superman Livesscreenplay, and we'll have more on that in a couple of days. For now, let's just say that it's...bonkers.
Source: IndieWire
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