The 10 Greatest Comic Book Movies That Were Never Made

1) Tim Burton’s Superman Lives

Superman Lives is probably the most well-known modern example of a comic book movie that never made it in front of the cameras, and it’s one of the earliest examples of project sunk due to negative fan reaction in the nascent internet age. Recently the subject of a crowd-sourced documentary, there’s a new found admiration for what Tim Burton and his team were trying to do with Superman Lives, but was it the Superman film that we needed, or was it the one we deserved? Was it either?

Development on Superman Lives goes back to 1995 when Kevin Smith, then just coming off the success of Clerks, was offered the chance to pen a script based on the comic book storyline “The Death and Life of Superman.” The ludicrousness of this process is covered in Smith’s first Q&A session, but by the time Burton came on, Smith was off the project. Nicolas Cage was hired to play the Man of Steel, Sandra Bullock as Lois Lane, Chris Rock as Jimmy Olsen, and potentially Jim Carrey as Brainiac. Locations were scouted, Super-suits were being made, props were created, and then the studio bulked at the price tag and the plug was pulled.

That’s the official story, but there were a number of forces that aligned to stop the creation of Superman Lives, and one of them was economical, as Warner Bros. took a good hard look at their financials after a year of costly flops. Leaks concerning the plans for the movie, including a more contemplative and existential Superman played by Cage, were met with anger by fans. Indeed, the reaction to Cage’s casting was eerily reminiscent of the days following Michael Keaton’s casting on Batman. Fans also questioned whether or not Burton’s dark and gothic style was a match for the much sunnier world of Superman. Further leaks of artwork and concept designs after the production were shuttered garnered a collective sigh of relief.

Would Superman Lives have been a disaster? It’s hard to say, but the doc The Death of Superman Lives: What Happened? has certainly helped cultivate a sober second thought about the possibilities of the project. It certainly would have been a Superman unlike any other in the eight decade history of the character, and if fans have yet to learn this lesson, it’s that one should always reserve judgment until your butt is in the theater seat as the credits roll on the finished film.