Last week, screenwriter Dan Gilroy spoke about his work on the ultimately-aborted Superman Lives, a planned reboot of the Superman franchise from Batman director Tim Burton, which spent several years in development in the mid-90s, with Nicolas Cage attached as the Man of Steel. Now, ahead of the release of his directorial debut Nightcrawler, Gilroy has offered up some more details on the project during an interview with IndieWire…
“I came in after Kevin Smith and Wesley Strick had written drafts. I was very much taken by Tim’s approach, which was that Kal-El was not told by Jor-El, before he got put in the little spaceship, who he was or where he came from. So poor little Kal-El, when he winds up on earth, he has no freaking idea where he came from. His biggest fear is that he’s an alien. Our Superman was in therapy at the beginning of the film. He’s in a relationship with Lois Lane and he can’t commit. Or he was maybe in couple’s therapy. But he can’t commit because he doesn’t know who he is or what is going on with him. He’s hoping that he has some physiological condition that gives him these powers but that he’s still human. It becomes very apparent, though, early in the script, when Lex Luthor uncovers the remnants of the spacecraft, he suddenly realizes – ‘Oh my god, I’m an alien.’ It was all about the psychological trauma of it. I loved it. We had Chris Rock as Jimmy Olsen. And unfortunately, while we were working on the script, Warner Bros was hemorrhaging. Every big movie that was coming out was bombing and failing and when it came time to step up and bankroll our script, they didn’t have the financial wherewithal or desire. Which is a shame because Tim would have knocked it out of the park. And Nic Cage, oh my god! I was so ready for that. Tim had a handle on it. Tim understood everything about it. Tim would have created a Superman for the ages. I really feel that.”
Would Tim Burton have made a Superman for the ages? I guess we’ll never know…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=x5GKJJ4LIAc
Originally published October 1, 2014. Updated April 11, 2018.
