SUPERMAN LIVES! - The Development Hell of an Unmade Film

By Edward Gross     May 05, 2000

Superman's 60th anniversary came and went in 1998, with no sign of the SUPERMAN LIVES feature film that was supposed to have been released in time for the celebration. Not that there wasn't a tremendous amount of behind-the-scenes work being done on the project. Set to star Nicolas Cage as Superman/Clark Kent and possibly to be directed by Oliver Stone from a script from William Wisher (which follows scripts by Jonathan Lemkin, Kevin Smith, Dan Gilroy, Alex Ford and Wesley Strick), SUPERMAN LIVES has been in the making since at least 1995.

What the film apparently does have is an art department reportedly working on the look of the yet-to-be-finalized epic, and a merchandise tie-in with Burger King that should result in a variety of Kids Meals trinkets. There is also a penchant in most of the scripts written to date for Superman (looking more 'Matrix-like') to spend much of his time in a variety of armored suits and vehicles to fight the film's bad guys, Brainiac and Luthor.

That was not a misprint. For much of the film, Superman will reportedly be without his powers, fighting crime via numerous gadgets that should have the cumulative effect of making the world safe for the initiation of a whole new toy line. 'The revenue stream for Batman is greater for the toys than for the movies,' says a source associated with the film. 'That's your answer. What are they up to, the 99th Batman action figure? And they all sell. There's a very strong impetus from [producer] Jon Peters to have a lot of things in the film that can become toys. At one point, he was talking about a character named the Eradicator to have an 'Eradicator Stick' because he had images of posters and toys coming out of it. I'm not saying he's wrong by any means. Any movie that is that expensive has got to be backstopped with a lot of different sources of revenue.'

Considering that Superman has continually been updated for new generations over the decadessometimes more successfully than othersit somehow seems appropriate that this American icon's newest reason for being is to sell stuff. Such is modern Hollywood.

In 1938, the only thing writers Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were interested in selling was their concept for Superman, an alien being who lands on earth and decides to use his powers to fight for 'truth, justice and the American way.' Superman leapt off the comic book page and quickly made the transition to other mediums, including Max Fleischer's classic animated shorts of the '30s and '40s, radio dramas and cliffhanger movie serials starring Kirk Alyn in the dual roles of the Man of Steel and the mild-mannered reporter. He was followed by Baby Boomer-icon George Reeves in the low-budget feature film SUPERMAN AND THE MOLE MEN and the subsequent syndicated series, THE ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN.

Other attempts to continue the mythos included the early 1960s TV pilots SUPERBOY and SUPERPUP (midgets dressed as dogs in costumeyou can't possibly make this stuff up), the filmation cartoons of the '60s and the Broadway play, IT'S A BIRD, IT'S A PLANE, IT'S SUPERMAN. Despite these varied incarnations, the character didn't truly come into his own until 1978's SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE, starring Christopher Reeve and directed by Richard Donner, which captured the epic scope of the character and spawned three sequels of varying quality. This was followed by a SUPERGIRL spin-off (starring Helen Slater), and the syndicated ADVENTURES OF SUPERBOY series, starring, first, John Haynes Newton, and, then, Gerard Christopher. More recently, there was LOIS & CLARK: THE NEW ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN, a decidedly soft series focusing primarily on the relationship between Clark Kent and reporter Lois Lane and featuring fairly toothless villains; and the WB entry, SUPERMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES.

THE DEATH OF SUPERMAN

The seeds for SUPERMAN LIVES were probably planted by DC Comics' enormously successful 'Death of Superman' storyline, in which the Man of Steel goes up against a creature known as Doomsday, culminating, after a brutal battle, in the death of both characters. Superman dead? How quickly they forget. Probably just as forgotten is the skepticism that greeted the news that the Man of Steel was going to meet his end at the hands of the alien Doomsday in the pages of DC comics. Frankly, the skepticism was so thick that you could cut through it like heat vision through steel.

'A lot of people criticized us for doing something commercial,' explains Mike Carlin, Executive Editor of DC comics, who was, at the time, Editor-in-Chief of the four Superman titles published each month. 'They thought we only did it for commercial reasons. But every single story that we've plottedand I guarantee you it was the same with every editor and writer before uswas designed to hook a new reader. The problemas time goes on and we're living in the '80s and '90sis that a lot of people have decided that Superman is corny. They've decided that they saw a movie or a cartoon and it wasn't what they expected. It was our intention to get them to read the comic. If they didn't like it, that's cool, but at least tryliterallywhat we're doing as opposed to being influenced by an old movie or serials. At the same time, the extent we had to go to try and get people to read the comics seemed very drastic and calculated.

'The bottom line,' Carlin explains, 'is that we just wanted to tell the story of the world that took Superman for granted. After 50 years, a lot of kids didn't want their father's superhero. They were on to their own, like Ninja Turtles. We wanted to illustrate that Superman offered something pertinent for the world of the '90s and beyond. To do that, we had to show how cruddy it would be if he wasn't alivethat you don't know what you have until it's gone. That was the whole motivation of the story.'

The trick, according to Carlin, was to get people to read the storyline dealing with the actual death of the Man of Steel, which can be boiled down to a fatal slugfest between Superman and an alien being known as Doomsday. 'It was a battle that hooked the people who didn't think Superman was cool. Then we tricked them into reading the story by having it go right in to the funeral, in which, I dare say, there was one or two punches thrown out of eight issues. After that, we just stirred up the mix even more by adding the four Supermen. As a result, a lot of people saw that we had interesting stories to tell, even if they seemed outrageous and disrespectful at the time.'

One of the biggest problems regarding Superman for those who haven't read the title in years, is the perception that he is all-powerful and that nothing in the universe can threaten him. 'There was no question after page one whether or not he was going to win,' says Carlin, 'but that element's been pulled back for quite some time. In recent years he's made mistakes; he's lost battles; but ultimately he learned and grew from each adventure. Obviously, dying and coming back was his biggest triumph, though it didn't look like it when he died.'

Perhaps the most stunning aspect of the entire situation was the national attention the storyline got in newspapers and television broadcasts around the country. 'I cannot believe how big the world's reaction to this story was, and I feel that way for several reasons,' Carlin reveals. 'If this had been the first time Superman had ever died and come back, I would have been nervous about it. But this story has happened to Superman several times during the course of his history. All we did was explore it for a longer period of time. In the old days, he would have died, and 12 pages later he was all right again. Now it's 12 issues or 12 months later. We have a slight advantage in the weekly pacing of our books, in that it really does move faster than if there was just one title and you had to wait until next month to see what happens. It feels urgent, even if sometimes it isn't.'

A popular belief is that the character was killed off to help boost the sales of a fading title. Carlin says it isn't true. 'In the '40s,' he points out, 'Superman was probably at his peak, and they were selling close to a million copies regularly. But there wasn't a lot of competition. As time went by, the audience for comics just naturally shrank because of television, video games, and movies. Now you're in the '80s and '90s, and we've revamped Superman and started from scratch. He didn't have four titles the whole time. He went up and down from three to four to two. You don't have four titles a month with a character who's doing poorly. It just doesn't wash. At the same time, he wasn't top of the field, and he certainly had room for improvement. But he was nowhere near being canceled or anything like that. A lot of people wanted to think the worst, that we were doing it because it was going to be gone otherwise.

'Honestly,' he emphasizes, 'it was myself, all of the writers and the artists in one room, and we came up with a story. A lot of people said Warner Bros.' marketing department came in and told us to do this. Sorry, no marketing guys involved. When we told our marketing guys what we were planning, they said, 'Oh, Superman's going to die. That's happened before. Hopefully, you guys will do a good job.' We told all the retailers and distributors, and nobody batted an eye. It was just a comic book story. But when Advance Comics came out with the announcement and a real, official newspaper noticed it, that's when things got out of hand. It must have been a slow news day. Maybe if a war had broken out that day we wouldn't have had the success we had. It was just that the timing was right and we were lucky that people cared about it. Where it wasn't luckand I think the talent of the writers and artists saved the daywas when people didn't say, 'Oh, this stinks.' They said, 'Oh, this is better than I thought it was going to be.' That's the only part that we had total control over, what was inside the books.'

And yet commercial underpinnings seem apparent when one takes into consideration the fact that the death and life of Superman had given birth to a variety of spin-offs, including Superboy, Steel and Supergirl regular titles, a hardcover novelization of the entire storyline and a Warner Audio version entitled SUPERMAN LIVES.

'Supergirl was a mini-series that was planned even before all of this,' Carlin differs, 'and we actually held off a little bit so that it would fit more logically with the outcome of the 'Reign of the Supermen.' The Superboy and Steel series stand or fall on their own. A lot of people have asked, 'Is this going to dilute the Super-franchise?' I don't think that it will, because unlike the old days, this Superboy is different from Superman. All he's using is the logo. He's a totally different personality. Back then, Superboy was Superman and Supergirl was a girl Superman. Now she's different: her powers are different; her personality is different. Steel, especially, will bring his own take on things, and he never claimed to be a Superman in the first place. I think they all have something to say that is different from what Superman says, and they can be just as entertaining. The way I feel about the novel and audio version is that it's great that people who aren't comfortable with, or used to or able to, read a comic book are able to get the story we made up that day. Blind people can get the story, and that's a great thing. That doesn't happen to every comic book and I'm proud of that.'

And with Superman's resurrection helping readers discover, or rediscover, him, Carlin is confident that the character will stand for the same things he always has. 'The message is the same, and it's not wrong,' he enthuses. 'It's truth and justice. Maybe it's not the American way. We like to think of it as truth, justice and the good of all mankind. While there are Punisher-type characters who are considered heroes and Beavis and Butthead-type role models, I think there is still room for the Superman message. People who need it will hear it when they need to.'

SUPERMAN LIVES

Producer Jon Peters, of course, is the proverbial 800-pound Hollywood gorilla who, after a brief stint with former partner Peter Guber as the head of Columbia Pictures for Sony, has returned to the studio that essentially made him a star. It was Peters who guided the first two Batman films through production, and he's the guy who took on the task of reinvigorating Superman for the big-screen, hoping to make audiences forget Reeve's final foray in the role, SUPERMAN IV. The comic storyline seemed like a good starting-off point, and screenwriter Jonathan Lemkin was the first person hired to pen the script.

Lemkin, for his part, was a studio rewriter under contract at Warner, who had worked on the Brandon Lee-Dolph Lungren starrer SHOWDOWN IN LITTLE TOKYO as well as Sylvester Stallone's DEMOLITION MAN, Steven Seagal's UNDER SIEGE 2: DARK TERRITORY, Al Pacino's THE DEVIL'S ADVOCATE and an unproduced draft of LETHAL WEAPON 4.

'I think, based on the action of LETHAL WEAPON 4, some of the more supernatural elements of DEVIL'S ADVOCATE, and the fantasy elements of DEMOLITION MAN, everyone felt comfortable about going forward with me as the writer of the then titled SUPERMAN REBORN,' he muses.

Not that the task had been handed to him without its own share of creative pressure, as evidenced by the fact that he and Peters had to actually present their proposed storyline to the CEOs of Warner Bros. 'That just doesn't happen,' he laughs. 'Let's face it, I had been entrusted with this corporate asset, and it's a very different process than any other script I've ever worked on. Superman is a huge corporate asset, and if you look at the marketing that can come from this, it's phenomenal.'

One thing with which Lemkin did not concern himself was what had come before. Although the Superman film series started off with the Donner originaldeemed by many a modern classicit is generally considered to have diminished in quality with each subsequent entry.

'At that point,' he says, 'it had been seventeen years since the first Superman film. The audience that is going to see this movie certainly wasn't alive then. I think what we were looking at was how to bring Superman into the '90s and keep him fresh. The good thing about Superman is that he wants to do the right thing. He's not a conflicted hero, which is its own genre and can be a wonderful thing. There's something about Superman that's great in terms of his attitude of stepping into the breach, come what may. The timing for this movie just felt right.

'You have to remember,' Lemkin adds, 'that the biggest difference between Batman and Superman is that Batman is human. He's mortal. Superman came from another planet and demands fantasy elements that the others don't. I think that's much more exciting, and I feel that it's almost the result of what happens if you cross Batman with Star Wars. Superman versus human elements is not an interesting match. That's like me versus a slug. Who cares?'

Lemkin says that his assignment was basically to 'shake things up.' Well, he certainly delivered on that count, focusing the first part of the story on the relationship between Clark and Lois, including Superman's inability to give his alien heart over to a human woman. It is only after the battle with Doomsday, when he lies dying in her arms, that he comes to grips with is feelings for her. 'He literally dies as he professes his love to her,' he explains, 'and his life force jumps between them. Superman dies and Lois later finds out that she's pregnantimmaculately. She gives birth to a child who grows 21 years in three weeks, and is, essentially, the resurrected Superman.'

Recognizing that the Superman mythos has strong parallels to Christianitywhat with a celestial father sending his only son to EarthLemkin enjoyed dealing with the concept of an immaculate conception. 'I thought it would be funny to piss off the Far Right,' he smiles. 'I think most people would have enjoyed the tongue-in-cheek quality of it. Look, Batman's got nipples and a codpiece, for crying out loud!'

Turning more serious, he adds, 'In any good Superman movie, the fate of the whole planet should be at stake. The truth of the matter is that you've got to treat the legend with respect and at the same time put enough of a spin on it so that it's not something that people have seen before. It's really easy to get arch and coy, which is the last thing you want to do. Taking Superman seriously is sometimes hard, but that's what you have to do. You've got to have a villain whose powers and abilities demand Superman be the one that stops them. Their powers have to tax Superman to the limit. That's exciting and a challenge as well. All of the big myths are really about small truths and human moments. If you go out to slay a dragon, it's because your own hearth and home have been threatened.'

He notes that during his tenure on the project, there was definitely a specific film model in mind. 'If there are any movies we kept looking to over and over again in relationship to this, it's Star Wars and The Lion King,' says Lemkin. 'They're the most mythological films we looked at. We were trying desperately to make something that taps into deeper mythological stories, rather than just bad men come to town, cause trouble, and we kick their ass. We wanted something with a little more resonance.'

What Warners ultimately decided was that they wanted a different script, so they turned to screenwriter Gregory Poirier, who had already collaborated with Peters on ROSEWOOD. In the new version, Superman is having a difficult time dealing with his status as an alien among humans. While dealing with this, he has to go up against Brainiac and the creature Doomsday, which bleeds Kryptonite.

Next!

In Part II, writer-director Kevin Smith (CHASING AMY, MALLRATS, CLERKS, DOGMA) joins the project, and practically leaves screaming.