World Burton's Concept Art
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theMan-Bat
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Oh, right. Makes sense now. Thanks! So the final updated suit would have been like...
this? Allthough with the silver S perhaps?
Yes. The final suit he would wear in the end of the film is described as an all-dark blue suit (no yellow or red), made of shinny latex material, with a blood-red cape. That statue is basically the final suit, although without sculpted muscles and a large silver 'S'.
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batman strikes
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Oh, right. Makes sense now. Thanks! So the final updated suit would have been like...
this? Allthough with the silver S perhaps?
I thought this is the one that was built for the McG project that Henry Cavill would of worn if the project got any further in development.
theMan-Bat
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Yes, and it is also basically the last Superman Lives suit that Nicolas Cage would have worn at the end of Superman Lives, although without the sculpted muscles and it would have had a different S.
SuperDaniel
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I surely looks like Nicolas Cage.
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Unlike Gotham City in Tim Burton's Batman and Batman Returns which is mostly sets and miniatures at Pinewood Studios, Warner Studios and Universal Studios, Metropolis in Tim Burton's Superman Live was going to be filmed on location in an actual city - Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, using actual existing buildings for the Daily Planet and the LexCorp Tower.
Tim Burton chose Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania's City-County Building to be the Daily Planet in Superman Lives.
The entrance of the Daily Planet on this concept art is a match with Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania's City-County Building, but the City-County Building is not a huge skyscraper so Burton must have planed to use a long miniature with the Daily Planet globe that sits on top of the building for the full shots of the Daily Planet. Warner Studios sound stages were reserved.
Tim Burton chose the huge glass-exterior Philip Johnson-designed PPG Place building in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to be Lex Luthor's LexCorp Tower in Superman Lives.
Here is Rebecca Ascher-Walsh's informative article for Entertainment Weekly on May 29, 1998:
Two months ago, Tim Burton cruised over Pittsburgh's Fort Pitt bridge and took a final glance at the steely downtown skyline. The director planned to spend his summer here directing Nicolas Cage in Superman Lives, and on this trip, Burton, accompanied by his producer Jon Peters and his production designer Rick Heinrichs, was choosing final locations. By the time the trio boarded the plane back to L.A., a glass-exterior Philip Johnson-designed building had been rechristened Lex Luthor's lair, and the classical City-County Building had been chosen to headquarter the Daily Planet.
Meanwhile, at the New York offices of DC Comics, Superman's birthplace and home for the last 60 years, an artist was imposing a picture of Nicolas Cage onto a sketch of Superman. Perhaps Cage as Superman was no more odd a prospect than Michael Keaton as Batman. Perhaps, thought the cartoonist, doodling an S curl onto Cage's forehead, this could work after all.
But on May 1, 1998, Warner Bros. quietly shut down the production office of Tim Burton's Superman Lives, where, for the last year, designers had churned out sketches and producers had watched the film's budget soar above $100 million. At the same time, Warner cochair Terry Semel announced that on the heels of such expensive disasters as Kevin Costner's The Postman and Barry Levinson's Sphere, it would be scaling back on ''big event movies'' and focusing more on mid-priced films. (The decision, following a brutal year for the studio at the nation's cineplexes, ironically comes at a time when Warner's TV division has helped boost Time Warner to record overall earnings.) The studio is also likely to reduce the overall number of films it releases every year, a strategy Disney is pursuing as well.
While the studio made no mention of the closed production office and offered assurances that the Burton-Cage project was still in active development, Superman Lives became, in that moment, a painfully ironic title. While countless movies have taken a tour of duty in development hell, the sudden derailing of a film on which a studio has already committed upward of $30 million in talent deals and preproduction costs is almost without precedent.
In November 1993, the studio thought it had spotted its next billion-dollar franchise when it purchased the rights to produce Superman movies from Alexander Salkind. (Salkind and his son, Ilya, were behind the four Superman films that starred Christopher ReeveWarner distributed the first three, between 1978 and 1983; Cannon Films handled the fourth, Christopher Reeve's Superman IV: The Quest for Peace in 1987.) Tim Burton's Batman and Batman Returns had performed strongly at the box office, and superheroes seemed a sure way of securing lucrative tie-ins with toy companies and fast-food chains. "The idea of the comic franchise had been established by Tim Burton's Batman, and Superman is popular at our stores," says Warner Bros. president of production Lorenzo di Bonaventura. "It's a good product we're hoping to tap into."
In 1995, with Deborah Joy LeVine's Lois & Clark on ABC (also produced by Warner) a growing success, Batman producer Jon Peters took Superman in hand and approached Warner Bros. staff writer Jonathan Lemkin, who had just completed the first Lethal Weapon 4 script. Lemkin says he was given the instructions to "write a great movie," and fast: toy companies wanted to see a draft before the deadline for Toy Fair, the industry's annual show-fest.
Jonathan Lemkin based his screenplay, titled Superman Reborn, loosely on the plotline from The Death of Superman comics, which had boosted the comic's sales enormously in 1992, and began his script with Superman in death throes, vanquished by an alien monster named Doomsday. As Lois Lane bends down to give her hero a final embrace, she is impregnated with Superman's spirit; Lois Lane ultimately meets her own untimely death, but first manages to give birth to Superman Jr., who matures at warp speed and proceeds to save the universe.
Lemkin littered the story with nightmarish images to suggest that Armageddon was near. But the demolition of his script was nearer: Warner was preparing Joel Schumacher's Batman Forever, "and some of the underlying themes were close," Lemkin remembers. "That concerned them, and they decided to go a whole new way."
Enter screenwriter No. 2, Gregory Poirier, who had recently worked with Peters on Rosewood. Poirier's rewrite of Superman Reborn in December 1995 was more existential than Lemkin'sthe hero struggles with feelings of alienation as an outsider on Earthbut no less dark. Comic-book villain Brainiac was the enemy, attempting to defeat Superman with the aid of a Doomsday who bleeds Kryptonite. By the end of the script, Superman has exchanged his blue tights for a sleek black outfit, and Lois Lane is finally getting the idea that Clark Kent may have powers beyond those of mortal men.
Poirier says Warner execs expressed their pleasure with his Superman Reborn script in 1995, but months later in 1996, they asked indie screenwriter-director Kevin Smith, a superhero junkie who made 1997's Chasing Amy, a movie about two comic-book creators, for his input. Kevin Smith wasn't shy about expressing his opinion: "I said I thought it was terrible. Poirier didn't get the Superman mythos."("I won't stoop to Kevin's level by dissing another writer's work," retorts Poirier.) When Kevin Smith agreed to stick to The Death of Superman storyline with Doomsday and keep Brainiac as the main villain, Warner invited him on board. Kevin Smith's take was a more cheerful script titled Superman Lives, in which the fleet hero battles the bad guys while murmuring lines to Lois Lane (who, in this version, knows Clark's secret identity) like, "From now on, I'm going to be more man than super."
In August 1996, Kevin Smith was dispatched to recite his outline to Jon Peters at the producer's mansion ("I thought he was dyslexic or something, but he likes to be read to"); one month later, he handed in his finished script. Kevin Smith says Warner professed delight, this time in part, no doubt, because it won the attention of Tim Burton and Nicolas Cage, as well as Kevin Spacey for the role of Lex Luthor and Chris Rock as Jimmy Olsen. But once Burton and Cage signed pay-or-play deals (according to insiders, Burton's is worth $5 million, Cage's $20 million), Kevin Smith's script was doctored.
"I was under the impression that Burton would at least have the courtesy to sit down with me," says Kevin Smithwho, ironically, is now under contract to write monthly superhero comics for both DC and Marvel. "He didn't." With Burton bringing in script doctor Wesley Strick (The Saint/Batman Returns), production was delayed until late spring 1997. (Di Bonaventura, while declining to comment on specifics within each script, says all four writers, Gregory Poirier, Kevin Smith, Wesley Strick and Dan Gilroy, "have contributed creative elements that continue to be part of the overall mix.")
Warner's faith in Burton certainly didn't stem from his last directorial effort for the studio, the dismally performing and very expensive Mars Attacks! But Peters and Burton had worked together sucessfully on Batman, and the idea of reteaming themwith a push from Cageseemed promising. What the studio didn't count on was that the combination of the F/X-happy director and the '80s-holdover producer would result in a budget that soared, some estimate, to between $140 and $190 million. "It's not like building a house," says Di Bonaventura. "You're creating a world where a guy flies around, something new where it takes a lot of time between when you create a wild scene and when ILM puts a price tag on it. We were never able to wrestle the budget down."
"We didn't have a script we loved, and the budget was too high," says Warner co-chairman Bob Daly. "When the budget started getting out of control, that's when we decided to pull the plug."
If Tim Burton's Superman Lives had proceeded on its original schedule, it would now be celebrating the comic book's 60th anniversary by engaging in a tooth-versus-cape competition with Roland Emmerich's Godzilla. But on May 4 1998, in place of invitations to a celebratory wrap party, 400 people received cards with a sketch of the Man of Steel lying in a coffin, asking them to attend a "Superman Lives wake" thrown by a few rebellious Superman Lives staffers at the Hollywood Athletic Club. (The organizers of the party, fearing that Warner execs wouldn't take kindly to the premature burial, eventually decided to cancel the shindig.)
Now, as Superman Lives crew members search for work, Peters is producing another Warner "event" movie (Barry Sonnenfeld's Wild, Wild West, starring Will Smith), and Burton continues to work on the Superman Lives script (now in the hands of script doctor Dan Gilroy) with input from Di Bonaventura. "We know we're getting close, but we're not there yet," says Di Bonaventura. "The creative process is imprecise at best, but over the last two or three months we've accelerated in a good way. But we had hoped to accelerate that way six months ago."
As for Cage, he's in a win-win situation with a guaranteed $20 million paycheck--but according to a colleague, he's also suffering from hurt feelings: "Nic stayed loyal without a official screenplay and found out the plug had been pulled secondhand. Warner Bros. didn't handle it very well." ("We understand anyone being upset by a movie being pushed back," says Di Bonaventura. "It's a tough decision.")
On April 22, one week after Superman Lives was placed on hiatus, Warner officially dissolved the uneasy two-year partnership between copresidents of production Di Bonaventura and Bill Gerber (Gerber was given a production deal). Now, Di Bonaventura will have sole power under Bob Daly and Terry Semel, but he will also have no one with whom to share the burden of blame. With Joel Schumacher's Batman & Robin earning only $107 million domestically (less than half what Tim Burton's first Batman movie earned) and Richard Donner's Lethal Weapon 4 looming as a make-or-break monster, there is general disbelief outside Warner's executive suites that Tim Burton's Superman Lives, with an almost inevitable nine-figure budget, will be made at all. Instead, many assume that it will be sidelined as Warner turns its focus to "mid-priced" (Hollywood-speak for $30-80 million) films. Says Di Bonaventura: "We have a mandate to make event pictures. But do you need four a summer? No. Do you need two or three? Probably. So hopefully, we'll make five [mid-priced films] as well as Superman Lives."
The question is when--and how? "Part of the problem in Hollywood these days is they make movies from the release date backward," says Gregory Poirier. "If [Warner] is going to slow down, more power to them." In the wake of the past year's disappointing slate, it would certainly hurt Warner to take another public hit and admit that Superman Lives is dead. But some suggest that it will be far wiser for the studio to feel the sting of paying out Cage, Burton, and preproduction costs than trying to revive a franchise that currently has no heat (low ratings felled Lois & Clark in 1997, and sales of the Superman comic books are easily outstripped by Marvel's X-Men and DC's own JLA).
Di Bonaventura says he'd be "shocked" if the studio didn't make the film--"I just spent two hours in a Superman Lives meeting"--but acknowledges that Warner is proceeding with caution. "There's no corporate agenda to make less; there's a corporate agenda to make better," he says. "We have a cluttered marketplace, and we're facing incredibly high production, marketing, and star costs. When you make your bets, you want it to be a sure bet. And sometimes, that requires that you slow the process down."
http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,283376,00.html
Tim Burton's Superman Lives didn't get beyond preproduction because Warner co-chairman Bob Daly pulled the plug and never green lighted it again.
Tim Burton chose Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania's City-County Building to be the Daily Planet in Superman Lives.
The entrance of the Daily Planet on this concept art is a match with Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania's City-County Building, but the City-County Building is not a huge skyscraper so Burton must have planed to use a long miniature with the Daily Planet globe that sits on top of the building for the full shots of the Daily Planet. Warner Studios sound stages were reserved.
Tim Burton chose the huge glass-exterior Philip Johnson-designed PPG Place building in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to be Lex Luthor's LexCorp Tower in Superman Lives.
Here is Rebecca Ascher-Walsh's informative article for Entertainment Weekly on May 29, 1998:
Two months ago, Tim Burton cruised over Pittsburgh's Fort Pitt bridge and took a final glance at the steely downtown skyline. The director planned to spend his summer here directing Nicolas Cage in Superman Lives, and on this trip, Burton, accompanied by his producer Jon Peters and his production designer Rick Heinrichs, was choosing final locations. By the time the trio boarded the plane back to L.A., a glass-exterior Philip Johnson-designed building had been rechristened Lex Luthor's lair, and the classical City-County Building had been chosen to headquarter the Daily Planet.
Meanwhile, at the New York offices of DC Comics, Superman's birthplace and home for the last 60 years, an artist was imposing a picture of Nicolas Cage onto a sketch of Superman. Perhaps Cage as Superman was no more odd a prospect than Michael Keaton as Batman. Perhaps, thought the cartoonist, doodling an S curl onto Cage's forehead, this could work after all.
But on May 1, 1998, Warner Bros. quietly shut down the production office of Tim Burton's Superman Lives, where, for the last year, designers had churned out sketches and producers had watched the film's budget soar above $100 million. At the same time, Warner cochair Terry Semel announced that on the heels of such expensive disasters as Kevin Costner's The Postman and Barry Levinson's Sphere, it would be scaling back on ''big event movies'' and focusing more on mid-priced films. (The decision, following a brutal year for the studio at the nation's cineplexes, ironically comes at a time when Warner's TV division has helped boost Time Warner to record overall earnings.) The studio is also likely to reduce the overall number of films it releases every year, a strategy Disney is pursuing as well.
While the studio made no mention of the closed production office and offered assurances that the Burton-Cage project was still in active development, Superman Lives became, in that moment, a painfully ironic title. While countless movies have taken a tour of duty in development hell, the sudden derailing of a film on which a studio has already committed upward of $30 million in talent deals and preproduction costs is almost without precedent.
In November 1993, the studio thought it had spotted its next billion-dollar franchise when it purchased the rights to produce Superman movies from Alexander Salkind. (Salkind and his son, Ilya, were behind the four Superman films that starred Christopher ReeveWarner distributed the first three, between 1978 and 1983; Cannon Films handled the fourth, Christopher Reeve's Superman IV: The Quest for Peace in 1987.) Tim Burton's Batman and Batman Returns had performed strongly at the box office, and superheroes seemed a sure way of securing lucrative tie-ins with toy companies and fast-food chains. "The idea of the comic franchise had been established by Tim Burton's Batman, and Superman is popular at our stores," says Warner Bros. president of production Lorenzo di Bonaventura. "It's a good product we're hoping to tap into."
In 1995, with Deborah Joy LeVine's Lois & Clark on ABC (also produced by Warner) a growing success, Batman producer Jon Peters took Superman in hand and approached Warner Bros. staff writer Jonathan Lemkin, who had just completed the first Lethal Weapon 4 script. Lemkin says he was given the instructions to "write a great movie," and fast: toy companies wanted to see a draft before the deadline for Toy Fair, the industry's annual show-fest.
Jonathan Lemkin based his screenplay, titled Superman Reborn, loosely on the plotline from The Death of Superman comics, which had boosted the comic's sales enormously in 1992, and began his script with Superman in death throes, vanquished by an alien monster named Doomsday. As Lois Lane bends down to give her hero a final embrace, she is impregnated with Superman's spirit; Lois Lane ultimately meets her own untimely death, but first manages to give birth to Superman Jr., who matures at warp speed and proceeds to save the universe.
Lemkin littered the story with nightmarish images to suggest that Armageddon was near. But the demolition of his script was nearer: Warner was preparing Joel Schumacher's Batman Forever, "and some of the underlying themes were close," Lemkin remembers. "That concerned them, and they decided to go a whole new way."
Enter screenwriter No. 2, Gregory Poirier, who had recently worked with Peters on Rosewood. Poirier's rewrite of Superman Reborn in December 1995 was more existential than Lemkin'sthe hero struggles with feelings of alienation as an outsider on Earthbut no less dark. Comic-book villain Brainiac was the enemy, attempting to defeat Superman with the aid of a Doomsday who bleeds Kryptonite. By the end of the script, Superman has exchanged his blue tights for a sleek black outfit, and Lois Lane is finally getting the idea that Clark Kent may have powers beyond those of mortal men.
Poirier says Warner execs expressed their pleasure with his Superman Reborn script in 1995, but months later in 1996, they asked indie screenwriter-director Kevin Smith, a superhero junkie who made 1997's Chasing Amy, a movie about two comic-book creators, for his input. Kevin Smith wasn't shy about expressing his opinion: "I said I thought it was terrible. Poirier didn't get the Superman mythos."("I won't stoop to Kevin's level by dissing another writer's work," retorts Poirier.) When Kevin Smith agreed to stick to The Death of Superman storyline with Doomsday and keep Brainiac as the main villain, Warner invited him on board. Kevin Smith's take was a more cheerful script titled Superman Lives, in which the fleet hero battles the bad guys while murmuring lines to Lois Lane (who, in this version, knows Clark's secret identity) like, "From now on, I'm going to be more man than super."
In August 1996, Kevin Smith was dispatched to recite his outline to Jon Peters at the producer's mansion ("I thought he was dyslexic or something, but he likes to be read to"); one month later, he handed in his finished script. Kevin Smith says Warner professed delight, this time in part, no doubt, because it won the attention of Tim Burton and Nicolas Cage, as well as Kevin Spacey for the role of Lex Luthor and Chris Rock as Jimmy Olsen. But once Burton and Cage signed pay-or-play deals (according to insiders, Burton's is worth $5 million, Cage's $20 million), Kevin Smith's script was doctored.
"I was under the impression that Burton would at least have the courtesy to sit down with me," says Kevin Smithwho, ironically, is now under contract to write monthly superhero comics for both DC and Marvel. "He didn't." With Burton bringing in script doctor Wesley Strick (The Saint/Batman Returns), production was delayed until late spring 1997. (Di Bonaventura, while declining to comment on specifics within each script, says all four writers, Gregory Poirier, Kevin Smith, Wesley Strick and Dan Gilroy, "have contributed creative elements that continue to be part of the overall mix.")
Warner's faith in Burton certainly didn't stem from his last directorial effort for the studio, the dismally performing and very expensive Mars Attacks! But Peters and Burton had worked together sucessfully on Batman, and the idea of reteaming themwith a push from Cageseemed promising. What the studio didn't count on was that the combination of the F/X-happy director and the '80s-holdover producer would result in a budget that soared, some estimate, to between $140 and $190 million. "It's not like building a house," says Di Bonaventura. "You're creating a world where a guy flies around, something new where it takes a lot of time between when you create a wild scene and when ILM puts a price tag on it. We were never able to wrestle the budget down."
"We didn't have a script we loved, and the budget was too high," says Warner co-chairman Bob Daly. "When the budget started getting out of control, that's when we decided to pull the plug."
If Tim Burton's Superman Lives had proceeded on its original schedule, it would now be celebrating the comic book's 60th anniversary by engaging in a tooth-versus-cape competition with Roland Emmerich's Godzilla. But on May 4 1998, in place of invitations to a celebratory wrap party, 400 people received cards with a sketch of the Man of Steel lying in a coffin, asking them to attend a "Superman Lives wake" thrown by a few rebellious Superman Lives staffers at the Hollywood Athletic Club. (The organizers of the party, fearing that Warner execs wouldn't take kindly to the premature burial, eventually decided to cancel the shindig.)
Now, as Superman Lives crew members search for work, Peters is producing another Warner "event" movie (Barry Sonnenfeld's Wild, Wild West, starring Will Smith), and Burton continues to work on the Superman Lives script (now in the hands of script doctor Dan Gilroy) with input from Di Bonaventura. "We know we're getting close, but we're not there yet," says Di Bonaventura. "The creative process is imprecise at best, but over the last two or three months we've accelerated in a good way. But we had hoped to accelerate that way six months ago."
As for Cage, he's in a win-win situation with a guaranteed $20 million paycheck--but according to a colleague, he's also suffering from hurt feelings: "Nic stayed loyal without a official screenplay and found out the plug had been pulled secondhand. Warner Bros. didn't handle it very well." ("We understand anyone being upset by a movie being pushed back," says Di Bonaventura. "It's a tough decision.")
On April 22, one week after Superman Lives was placed on hiatus, Warner officially dissolved the uneasy two-year partnership between copresidents of production Di Bonaventura and Bill Gerber (Gerber was given a production deal). Now, Di Bonaventura will have sole power under Bob Daly and Terry Semel, but he will also have no one with whom to share the burden of blame. With Joel Schumacher's Batman & Robin earning only $107 million domestically (less than half what Tim Burton's first Batman movie earned) and Richard Donner's Lethal Weapon 4 looming as a make-or-break monster, there is general disbelief outside Warner's executive suites that Tim Burton's Superman Lives, with an almost inevitable nine-figure budget, will be made at all. Instead, many assume that it will be sidelined as Warner turns its focus to "mid-priced" (Hollywood-speak for $30-80 million) films. Says Di Bonaventura: "We have a mandate to make event pictures. But do you need four a summer? No. Do you need two or three? Probably. So hopefully, we'll make five [mid-priced films] as well as Superman Lives."
The question is when--and how? "Part of the problem in Hollywood these days is they make movies from the release date backward," says Gregory Poirier. "If [Warner] is going to slow down, more power to them." In the wake of the past year's disappointing slate, it would certainly hurt Warner to take another public hit and admit that Superman Lives is dead. But some suggest that it will be far wiser for the studio to feel the sting of paying out Cage, Burton, and preproduction costs than trying to revive a franchise that currently has no heat (low ratings felled Lois & Clark in 1997, and sales of the Superman comic books are easily outstripped by Marvel's X-Men and DC's own JLA).
Di Bonaventura says he'd be "shocked" if the studio didn't make the film--"I just spent two hours in a Superman Lives meeting"--but acknowledges that Warner is proceeding with caution. "There's no corporate agenda to make less; there's a corporate agenda to make better," he says. "We have a cluttered marketplace, and we're facing incredibly high production, marketing, and star costs. When you make your bets, you want it to be a sure bet. And sometimes, that requires that you slow the process down."
http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,283376,00.html
Tim Burton's Superman Lives didn't get beyond preproduction because Warner co-chairman Bob Daly pulled the plug and never green lighted it again.
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Nightwing1983
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I don't really agree, but wouldn't it have been interesting if Cage did the voice of Superman in Superman: Doomsday?
theMan-Bat
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I agree.
I'm glad Cage didn't waste his voice on the lame Superman: Doomsday. The action involving Doomsday was over pretty fast for a movie called Doomsday. The animation was bland. The storylines were a bore. Jimmy Olsen getting a job at a trashy magazine? I couldn't care less about that. I was really disappointed.
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More Superman Lives information:
David Poland's The Hot Button reported on September 27, 1997:
Superman may live, but not until 1999. After moving faster than a speeding bullet to start filming October 6th 1997 with Nicolas Cage putting on the tights for director Tim Burton, the film leaped to a February 1998 start date, then took a second bound to April 1998. Why? It's inferred. To explain. Superman Lives has had enough troubles to make one believe that Lex Luthor was an exec at another studio. Burton had the original script, by Chasing Amy scribe Kevin Smith, doctored. The new version, by Wesley Strick (Cape Fear/The Saint), apparently has struck Kryptonite as well. Then, the production move to early 1998 made the scheduled summer 1998 release date into a Titanic-like scheduling nightmare. So, Warner Bros. moved it to Christmas 1998. Okay? Nope! Producer Jon Peters wanted a summer movie! So, July 3, 1999 it is. Safe at last? Warner Bros. hopes so. The Independence Day release date is five whole weeks from the Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace prequel.
http://www.mcnblogs.com/thehotbutton/1997/09/superman_may_live_but_not_unti.html
So July 3, 1999 was the release date. Dan Gilroy's script was finished on February 24, 1998. It had been set to go in front of cameras in July 1998. Danny Elfman was also going to score Tim Burton's Superman Lives. In April 1998 Cage was fitted and filmed for test shots in various suits. On April 21, 1998 Superman Lives had been postponed.
April 21, 1998: Superman Lives Postponed!
WARNER BROS. has postponed the production of the new Superman movie (Superman Lives/Reborn) indefinitely, blaming its budget of over $125 million and being unsatisfied with the script. It had been set to go in front of cameras in July.
http://www.supermanhomepage.com/news/1998-news/1998-news-movie.php?topic=1998-news-movie/0421
Tim Burton said, “(I) knew it was all over when the producers, upon looking at the test shots of Cage in various suits, said 'We don't like the red underpants. We were thinking he could have shorts sort of like Michael Jordan. Also, we think the suit should incorporate corduroy. And you can keep the boots, I guess, but we'd like some flames or something on the side of them.'”
http://www.cinemablend.com/features/The-Death-Of-Superman-A-BNN-Special-Report-28.html
Producer Jon Peters and the studio executives wanted to make Superman look Hip-Hop to appeal to Hip-Hop fans. Of course Tim Burton wasn't going to make Superman a wanksta w!gger Hip-Hop wannabe.
Warner co-chairman Bob Daly said Superman Lives was too expensive so Tim Burton and Dan Gilroy worked on a second script which was finished on September 20, 1998 to lower the budget.
Excerpts from Superman vs. Hollywood:
Warner co-chairman Bob Daly still refused to greenlight Superman Lives again. The casting of Nicolas Cage as Superman became a firestorm of controversy and that obviously scared Daly. He was obviously worried that Tim Burton's concepts were too weird for mainstream audiences. Daly thought Superman Lives would flop. He thought Wild Wild West directed by Barry Sonnenfeld and starring Will Smith was a sure bet to be a hit because Men in Black directed by Barry Sonnenfeld and starring Will Smith was a hit.
In the May 16 1997 edition of Entertainment Weekly, Kevin Smith says Nicholas Cage would be a fine Superman and "his hairline can be fixed."
http://www.supermanhomepage.com/news/1997-news/1997-news-movie.php?topic=1997-news-movie/1014
Cage was indeed going to wear Superman wigs to fix his hairline for Superman.
Excerpt from Superman vs. Hollywood:
From Entertainment Weekly, November 19, 1999:
The director was heartbroken over his experience with Warner Bros. on Superman Lives. After he'd worked on the project for a year (with Nicolas Cage set to star), the studio yanked the film away from Burton, citing script problems and a steep budget. "That was extremely painful," he says. "I had locations scouted and I had meeting after meeting. I don't think those people realize how much of your heart and soul you pour into something." Burton slumps in his chair. "I was pretty shell-shocked by the whole situation. And I didn't want to make any old piece of crap just to move on--I didn't want to be like, ' Okay, I'll do Police Academy 8 because I need the work.'"
http://www.timburtoncollective.com/articles/sh7.html
New York Times November 9, 2003:
Burton's still smarting from the studio's canceling his production of Superman Lives in 1998 after he worked on the project for a year. ''I had a sense that we could do it as a fable,'' he said, still dejected by the memory. ''That was so extremely painful. I had sketches and meetings upon meetings. After Superman, I was happy to chop peoples' heads off in Sleepy Hollow. It was cathartic.''
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/09/movies/09BURTON.html?pagewanted=all
The Guardian January 6, 2000:
Has Superman fallen by the wayside? What happened?
Tim Burton: I worked on that for a year and I'm sure they'll do it at some point - once they get all their fast food things lined up. That's the problem with these things. In the first Batman you didn't hear the word 'franchise' and these movies are hard to make but they make it harder when they come at it the other way round. It was something that had never happened to me before. When you work hard on something and it doesn't happen it's hard to go back.
Is Sleepy Hollow a reaction to your experiences on Superman?
Tim Burton: Yes, all those heads are studio executives [Laughter]. Well you know the poster: 'Heads will roll' that's our motto!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2000/jan/06/guardianinterviewsatbfisouthbank
David Poland's The Hot Button reported on September 27, 1997:
Superman may live, but not until 1999. After moving faster than a speeding bullet to start filming October 6th 1997 with Nicolas Cage putting on the tights for director Tim Burton, the film leaped to a February 1998 start date, then took a second bound to April 1998. Why? It's inferred. To explain. Superman Lives has had enough troubles to make one believe that Lex Luthor was an exec at another studio. Burton had the original script, by Chasing Amy scribe Kevin Smith, doctored. The new version, by Wesley Strick (Cape Fear/The Saint), apparently has struck Kryptonite as well. Then, the production move to early 1998 made the scheduled summer 1998 release date into a Titanic-like scheduling nightmare. So, Warner Bros. moved it to Christmas 1998. Okay? Nope! Producer Jon Peters wanted a summer movie! So, July 3, 1999 it is. Safe at last? Warner Bros. hopes so. The Independence Day release date is five whole weeks from the Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace prequel.
http://www.mcnblogs.com/thehotbutton/1997/09/superman_may_live_but_not_unti.html
So July 3, 1999 was the release date. Dan Gilroy's script was finished on February 24, 1998. It had been set to go in front of cameras in July 1998. Danny Elfman was also going to score Tim Burton's Superman Lives. In April 1998 Cage was fitted and filmed for test shots in various suits. On April 21, 1998 Superman Lives had been postponed.
April 21, 1998: Superman Lives Postponed!
WARNER BROS. has postponed the production of the new Superman movie (Superman Lives/Reborn) indefinitely, blaming its budget of over $125 million and being unsatisfied with the script. It had been set to go in front of cameras in July.
http://www.supermanhomepage.com/news/1998-news/1998-news-movie.php?topic=1998-news-movie/0421
Tim Burton said, “(I) knew it was all over when the producers, upon looking at the test shots of Cage in various suits, said 'We don't like the red underpants. We were thinking he could have shorts sort of like Michael Jordan. Also, we think the suit should incorporate corduroy. And you can keep the boots, I guess, but we'd like some flames or something on the side of them.'”
http://www.cinemablend.com/features/The-Death-Of-Superman-A-BNN-Special-Report-28.html
Producer Jon Peters and the studio executives wanted to make Superman look Hip-Hop to appeal to Hip-Hop fans. Of course Tim Burton wasn't going to make Superman a wanksta w!gger Hip-Hop wannabe.
Warner co-chairman Bob Daly said Superman Lives was too expensive so Tim Burton and Dan Gilroy worked on a second script which was finished on September 20, 1998 to lower the budget.
Excerpts from Superman vs. Hollywood:
Warner co-chairman Bob Daly still refused to greenlight Superman Lives again. The casting of Nicolas Cage as Superman became a firestorm of controversy and that obviously scared Daly. He was obviously worried that Tim Burton's concepts were too weird for mainstream audiences. Daly thought Superman Lives would flop. He thought Wild Wild West directed by Barry Sonnenfeld and starring Will Smith was a sure bet to be a hit because Men in Black directed by Barry Sonnenfeld and starring Will Smith was a hit.
In the May 16 1997 edition of Entertainment Weekly, Kevin Smith says Nicholas Cage would be a fine Superman and "his hairline can be fixed."
http://www.supermanhomepage.com/news/1997-news/1997-news-movie.php?topic=1997-news-movie/1014
Cage was indeed going to wear Superman wigs to fix his hairline for Superman.
Excerpt from Superman vs. Hollywood:
From Entertainment Weekly, November 19, 1999:
The director was heartbroken over his experience with Warner Bros. on Superman Lives. After he'd worked on the project for a year (with Nicolas Cage set to star), the studio yanked the film away from Burton, citing script problems and a steep budget. "That was extremely painful," he says. "I had locations scouted and I had meeting after meeting. I don't think those people realize how much of your heart and soul you pour into something." Burton slumps in his chair. "I was pretty shell-shocked by the whole situation. And I didn't want to make any old piece of crap just to move on--I didn't want to be like, ' Okay, I'll do Police Academy 8 because I need the work.'"
http://www.timburtoncollective.com/articles/sh7.html
New York Times November 9, 2003:
Burton's still smarting from the studio's canceling his production of Superman Lives in 1998 after he worked on the project for a year. ''I had a sense that we could do it as a fable,'' he said, still dejected by the memory. ''That was so extremely painful. I had sketches and meetings upon meetings. After Superman, I was happy to chop peoples' heads off in Sleepy Hollow. It was cathartic.''
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/09/movies/09BURTON.html?pagewanted=all
The Guardian January 6, 2000:
Has Superman fallen by the wayside? What happened?
Tim Burton: I worked on that for a year and I'm sure they'll do it at some point - once they get all their fast food things lined up. That's the problem with these things. In the first Batman you didn't hear the word 'franchise' and these movies are hard to make but they make it harder when they come at it the other way round. It was something that had never happened to me before. When you work hard on something and it doesn't happen it's hard to go back.
Is Sleepy Hollow a reaction to your experiences on Superman?
Tim Burton: Yes, all those heads are studio executives [Laughter]. Well you know the poster: 'Heads will roll' that's our motto!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2000/jan/06/guardianinterviewsatbfisouthbank
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Metropolis_Man
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Interesting little tid bits man bat. Thanks for the post! I enjoyed that.
theMan-Bat
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I'm glad you enjoyed the post, Metropolis Man.
Retroman
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Sorry for not replying sooner.Oh, I see. Say, how did you find it? Did you look for Superman Lives things or what? I mean are you doing research or something?
I'm interested in the history of development hell that the various unmade Superman movies have endured yes.
They are still essentially different though - different director and created by Stan Winston's crew.
Thanks for the rundown theMan-Bat. I've skimped through it and even though i've read it before it's kind of fascinating what happened or (thankfully)didn't happen.
A new book is going to be released later this year called The Art Of Tim Burton.
Source
With that many images there's a reasonable chance it will include some of his preproduction work for Superman.
Antonello Blueberry
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Michelle Forbes was the lead candidate to play Lois Lane.
theMan-Bat
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Michelle Forbes had a scheduling conflict and passed. She was on for 24 Homicide episodes for 97-98.
http://www.geocities.com/~ken_m_lee/cf_1997.html
TimBurtonJP
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Antonello Blueberry
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Great. People who praised the Johns/Frank Superman run should see how much it was inspired by Burton's movie.
batman strikes
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Hopefully we are getting closer to seeing concept art of the more classic costume that Nic Cage would of worn at the begginning of the film. Brainiac looks pretty cool, but I wonder if he was going to look like that through the entire film or if he was eventually going to get an entire body for his head.
Antonello Blueberry
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No, Brainiac enters the body of Lex Luthor.
batman strikes
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oh, yeah I forgot it' been a while since I read the script for Superman Lives. Wasn't the actor who would of been cast as Lex Luthor also been cast as the voice of Brainiac? I remember hearing that somewhere in an old article.
04nbod
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looking at the spider brainiac reminded me of this
[YT]Nxho7FpP_ek[/YT]
An in-joke maybe? or plain inspiration?
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