SUPERMAN Producers Thought Richard Donner Would Steal the Work Print and He Didn't Fully Experience the Film Until Its Premiere
I’ve been enjoying digging into the development of Richard Donner’s 1978 DC movie Superman. It’s one of my favorites, and it sure had such a crazy and fascinating road through its production and development. You can find a few articles I’ve already written coving those stories here.
In this article, I cover a story in which two of the producers of the film, Alexander and Ilya Salkinds, thought that at one point that Donner and his team were going to steal the work print of the movie! When recounting the story Donner said:
“I finally got a cut, and we were going to take the work print to Los Angeles and have a screening at the studio, because we were editing in London. It was all arranged, and [editor] Stuart Baird and I flew to L.A., and when we get there, I get a call from [Warner Bros. executive] John Calley, who says: ‘We’ve got a big problem. The Salkinds won’t release the work print because they say we’re trying to steal it.’ And I say, ‘We can’t steal it. They have the negative there.’ He said, ‘Well, they’re claiming that we can make a negative off the work print.’ I said, ‘No, you can’t. That’s physically impossible.’”
There was obviously a lot of paranoia surrounding the film, and it’s so wild that they had issues sending a work print over to the studio so the executives could watch it, but the Salkinds were apparently difficult to work with during the production.
Donner went on to say that this delayed things and because of that, there was no time for the studio to hold press screenings. He shared:
“The negative had to be shipped to L.A. and [Warners had to pay the Salkinds] all this money [to do so]. The negative had to be cut, timed, printed. So [there was no time to hold] test screenings. Not one. I saw it at the lab, no audience, without sound. The second one I saw with sound.
He then explained that he didn’t even know what kind of film he has really made until he watched it at the premiere:
I didn’t know what I had until I saw it with an audience at the premiere. They loved it. I couldn’t believe it. It was thrilling.
Damn! What a seriously intense production that must’ve been! Right up until the premiere of the film!
Source: THR