Nicolas Cage Says Tim Burton Didn't Cast Him as Superman in SUPERMAN LIVES, He Cast Tim Burton
The story behind Tim Burton and Nicolas Cage’s unproduced film Superman Lives is an interesting one. It’s the greatest Superman movie that was never made, and it only lives in the imaginations of the fans. There’s been some cool behind-the-scenes stuff that has been released over the years and there’s an interesting documentary you can watch titled The Death of "Superman Lives": What Happened? I remember when the first photo of Cage dressed up as Superman surfaced. The fan community exploded with all kinds of emotions. That was followed by more photos and even test footage. Cage has confirmed a new little detail about the 1998 project.
It turns out that director Tim Burton isn’t the person that cast Nicolas Cage in the film. It was Cage who brought in Burton to direct. In an interview with Rolling Stone Magazine, Cage revealed:
“What I want to go on record with is: Tim Burton did not cast me. I cast Tim Burton. They wanted Renny Harlin, and he’s a nice guy and perfectly capable. But for me, the vision I had for Kal-El was more of a Tim Burton-style presentation universe.”
“I was a big fan of ‘Mars Attacks!.’ The studio was worried about ‘Mars Attacks!’ But they hired Tim per my request, and then they shut the whole thing down. That’s always been both a positive and a negative to me. It’s a positive in that it left the character, and what Tim and I might have gotten up to, in the realm of imagination — which is always more powerful than that is concrete. And a negative in that I think it would have been special. Is there a chance [to do this movie one day]? Who knows. I don’t know. [Laughs.] To answer your question, I don’t know.”
In case you’re not familiar with who Renny Harlin is, he directed films such as Die Hard 2, Cliffhanger, Driven, and The Long Kiss Goodnight. Burton was definitely the bigger creative and more imaginative force. It’s still crazy to me that this movie never got made. I can’t help but think it would have been awesomely insane.
When previously talking about the story, screenwriter Dan Gilroy discussed a scene from the script that he's bummed will never see the light of day:
"Tim had the idea, which was really the driving force of the movie, that Jor-el didn't have the chance to tell Kal-el when he put him in the little spaceship meteorite where he came from or who he was. So poor little Kal-el grew up on Earth having no idea where these powers came from or who he was, and I always thought that was a really inverted, deconstructionist element to bring to the story. I loved it and working with Tim we tried to explore it as much as possible. I'd love to see it happen some day. I'm a big Tim Burton fan."
The project was ultimately canceled due to the poor box office performance of Burton's sci-fi comedy Mars Attacks!