Kevin Smith: An Animated Adaptation Of Superman Lives “Would Be Fun To See”

Although it may be some time until the next live action solo Superman film gets here in the form of Man of Steel 2, it never hurts to think about which stories could be adapted to animation in the meantime. While that honor usually goes to comics such as The Death of Superman or All-Star Superman, we can now cross our fingers in hopes that a canned script will soon get similar treatment.

In a recent Facebook Q & A, filmmaker and lifelong lover of comics Kevin Smith was asked if he would like to see his ill-fated Superman Lives script resurrected as an animated film, and here’s what he had to say:

“Oh like based on my script, based on the Superman Lives script? That would be tight, dude. I’m not going to lie, that would be fun to see. That’s something I worked on 20 years ago at this point, so that would be really amazing to kind of see, like they turn it into a cartoon and get the people to do the voices. Nic Cage is still around and stuff. And I wanted Michael Rooker for my Lex Luthor, so that would be amazing. Um, but, you know, I’m game. That ain’t up to me, kids. That’s up to the good folks at Warner Bros. and stuff, but if they were ever to call and say hey, we want to do a cartoon version of that Superman script we wrote, believe me I’d be like, that’d be dope, man. You know you close all loops in life, one way or another, and that would be a nice way to close that loop.”

For those unfamiliar, Superman Lives was set to be released in the late 1990’s, with Smith’s script to be directed by Tim Burton. Long story short, those two, along with producer Jon Peters, didn’t exactly see eye to eye throughout the film’s production and it ultimately led to the project’s demise. Movie trivia fans recently got a generous helping in the form of the documentary The Death of Superman Lives: What Happened?, but if Warner Bros. Animation elected to pick up the script, it would be nothing short of historic.

Now that Smith has put this out to the universe, we can only hope that someone takes notice. The recent success of Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders was proof positive that nostalgia equals big bucks and may work in his favor. The only real hurdles from a creative standpoint would be trying to get Nicolas Cage to come back as Superman and having to possibly truncate the original screenplay to accommodate a running time of 75 minutes, the standard for DC animated movies – or they could break it into two parts just as they did with Batman: The Dark Knight Returns.

For now, those looking to get their Kevin Smith superhero fix can look forward to seeing the Supergirl episode that he directed, which was cleverly titled “Supergirl Lives,” on The CW this January.