Including a 5th classic Superman movie with Reeves, a Tim Burton Superman movie, another Tim Burton take with Supes on a wheelchair, a Kevin Smith-written one also directed by Burton, a Superman/Batman movie and a hundred more concepts that we may never know about! (including at one point having Nic Cage as Superman himself!!)
With a new movie announced, directed by Zack Snyder, in the work, some scrapped projects have been revealed since some key players, directors or producers won't be involved anymore.
Very nice subtle redesign by BeyondComics.TV, a more colorful and faithful approach
Back in the 90s, there wa sa big boom in comics thanks to the event called "Death of Superman".
For those who dare not know about this, the story goes like this:
A monster (Doomsday) awakes beneath the earth, goes on an unstoppable rampage until he reaches Metropolis. Many heroes try to stop him... Then Superman and Doomsday clashes in one of the most epic comic book fights ever written or drawn. Doomsday is temporary defeated and Supes dies... Then 4 fake Supermen appear from nowhere (a Kryptonian, a Clone, a Cyborg and a Human!!) before one of them is actually revealed to be the actual villain. The real Superman heals back and comes back to stop that monster.
It was a huuuuge hit for comics, sales were at their highest, people talked about it on TV, Newspaper, etc..
Anyway, this fantastic event was almost adapted into several movies back then.
The plan was, while Batman was still selling a lot with Batman Forever (despite as bad as it was) to adapt the Death of Superman event as a movie, make 4 spinoff titles for each fake Superman and then have a final Return of Superman movie...which never came to be.
While this Doomsday-event made it into a pretty fun and faithful videogame and much later a great animated movie, the live movie never made it past pre-production.
It was too ambitious and not well coordinated enough.
Finally, only the Steel solo project movie (the Human Superman) was made, "loosely" based on the actual comic book character with no ties to Superman with Shaquille O'Neal as Steel.
Now, flash to the year 2000s.
Before Zack Snyder took in the franchise recently, there were some scripts by J.J.Abrams featuring more kryptonians-inspired science fiction with Bryan Singer (X-men 2, Superman Returns) on board as director (with Brett Ratner as another possible director).
The movie would have been called Superman Fly-By (also rumoured as Superman: Man of Steel).
We didn't knew a thing about this movie...only it would have probably also featured Brandon Routh as Clark Kent.
Thanks to special effects designer Steve Johnson, we now can guess what the direction and even the plot would have been thanks to some pics he revealed.
And the reason I talked about Doomsday... it seems it would have been another shot at bringing the Death Of Superman to the big screen (guess who that monster is supposed to be):
The costume looked sort of inspired by some Elseworlds comics and the DC One Million lineup.
This makes me ask...why should adaptations be only taking from the classic/modern characters and not some variations of 'em as well?
Doomsday looks sort of generic, like the Abomination was in the Incredible Hulk movie. Typical over-complicated CGi hollywood modern monster-stuff. Yet I like that genetically enhanced creature look he gives me.
Will the actual new movie/reboot by Zack Snyder be actually better/worse? Will it feature a better_/worse costume design for Supes? (please, let him sport a big-ass S-shield logo!! not that ridiculous tiny one from Superman Returns!!)
And finally, if you tought all this was awful, be ready for worse now!
Something more....disco!
In the late 90s, Tim Burton wanted to have another shot at Superman -which none of his proposed ideas came to be before.
His last script, born from the ashes of the Kevin Smith synopsis was called Superman Lives.
It was supposed to be a gritty retelling and re-imagining of Supes.
And Steve Johnson also revealed concepts and tests of Superman's costume for this disaster:
°___°
I'm glad this catastrophe never made it past testing!
I don't even wanna think what Burton really had in mind for Supes here...
Hey, it doesn't even beat Nicolas Cage's Superman! :P
Another concept/test for yet another Tim Burton Superman project.
It's a picture of Nicky's head over a fake-Superman toy.
