11 Actors You Didn’t Know Nearly Played Superman

3) Brendan Fraser

After all these actors turned it down, Superman: Flyby did eventually find a willing star – The Mummy actor Brendan Fraser. The trouble this time, though, was that the studio weren’t keen on him. He later revealed that:

“It seems as if then the big monster studio machine and all the machinations behind it, all the cogs and wheels rolling, suddenly it went from an ‘offer’ to ‘subject to a screen test’ blah, blah, blah, ‘subject to approval’…”

Apparently what drew Fraser to the role is exactly what made fans glad the movie never happened – the re-imagining of the Superman mythos. Written by future Star Trek/Wars director J.J. Abrams, Flyby would have made Supes a martial arts expert, kept Krypton alive and made Lex Luthor a Kryptonian secret agent!