Brendan Fraser Reflects on Losing Superman Role in J.J. Abrams Scripted DC Movie

In the early 2000s Warner Bros. hired J.J. Abrams to write a Superman movie. That movie was going to be called Superman: Flyby and every young actor in Hollywood were auditioning for the lead role, including Brendan Fraser.

At some point in the multiverse, a version of this movie got made with Fraser in the role of the Man of Steel. But, this is a film that we’ll unfortunately never see. Fraser never landed the role and the movie never got made. When reflecting on that time that he was up for the role and how he was up against the likes of Paul Walker. Fraser said:

“Everyone in town was reading for Superman. Like, again, we’re testing I think six or seven guys in 2002/2003. Paul Walker, I remember Paul Walker was before me. They were like the usual suspects.”

While a guest on The Howard Stern Show, Fraser said he realized that landing the role of Superman would be “a life-changing amazing opportunity,” he also explained that he “had to reconcile with, ‘Okay, say you do get the job to be the Man of Steel, it’s gonna be chipped on your gravestone, are you okay with that? I mean, forever more known as the Man of Steel.'” He added:

“There was a sort of Faustian bargain that went into it. I think inherently, I didn’t want to be known for only one thing because I prided myself on diversity my whole professional life and I’m not a one-trick pony.”

Regardless, Fraser was disappointed that he missed out on the opportunity:

“I felt disappointed that there was an amazing opportunity and it didn’t come to fruition. It had to do a lot with some shenanigans and studio politics. And probably, inherently, in my screen test. I think that’s why you test… they could kind of see I was only there like 98%.”

Superman: Flyby was an origin story that “included Krypton besieged by a civil war between Jor-El and his corrupt brother, Kata-Zor. Before Kata-Zor sentences Jor-El to prison, Kal-El is launched to Earth to fulfill a prophecy. Adopted by Jonathan and Martha Kent, he forms a romance with Lois Lane in the Daily Planet. However, Lois is more concerned with exposing Lex Luthor, written as a government agent obsessed with UFO phenomena. Clark reveals himself to the world as Superman, bringing Kata-Zor’s son, Ty-Zor, and three other Kryptonians to Earth. Superman is defeated and killed, and visits Jor-El (who committed suicide on Krypton while in prison) in Kryptonian heaven. Resurrected, he returns to Earth and defeats the four Kryptonians, while the script ends with Superman off to Krypton, leaving a cliffhanger for a sequel.”

When previously talking about the details of the story Abrams said:

“The thing that I tried to emphasize in the story was that if the Kents found this boy, Kal-El, who had the power that he did, he would have most likely killed them both in short order. And the idea that these parents would see – if they were lucky to survive long enough – that they had to immediately begin teaching this kid to limit himself and to not be so fast, not be so strong, not be so powerful. The result of that, psychologically, would be fear of oneself, self-doubt and being ashamed of what you were capable of. Extrapolating that to adulthood became a fascinating psychological profile of someone who was not pretending to be Clark Kent, but who was Clark Kent. Who had become that kind of a character who is not able or willing to accept who he was and what his destiny was.

“The idea in the movie was that he became Superman because he realized he had to finally own his strength and what he’d always been.”

Warner Bros. and Abrams were developing Superman: Flyby around 2002. When the project got shelved, the studio ended up moving forward with a different take on the Man of Steel, and that was Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns, which cast Brandon Routh as the superhero.

Do you think Brendan Fraser would have made a good Superman!?