Every time a new Superman movie drops, I spiral into a cinematic fever dream. Because in some alternate timeline, Nicolas Cage himself was set to play Superman — and we were robbed.
The year is 2015 and Jon Schnepp just released a crowdfunded documentary: The Death of “Superman Lives”: What Happened? And it told the story of how our National Treasure Nicolas Cage was cast as Superman once upon a time.
This wasn’t just a rumor. It was real. There were costume tests. There were scripts. There was Kevin Smith locked and loaded as the screenwriter — stalling on pages by faxing blank sheets at 5pm on Fridays to buy himself the weekend.
The studio brought in Tim Burton to direct. YOUNG Tim Burton. What followed was less a production and more of a fever dream stitched together with studio notes, chaos, and one man’s unrelenting obsession with giant metal spiders.
Enter Jon Peters: the producer who wanted a Superman movie where Kal-El doesn’t fly, doesn’t wear the cape, and fights a massive robotic spider in the third act. That spider eventually made it into the 1999 Wild Wild West movie starring Will Smith. Yes. That spider.
If you know anything about Nic you know he’s a diehard comic book fan — name-his-son-Kal-El level fan. This wasn’t just another paycheck. Superman Lives was personal. His white whale. The role that would’ve let him blend his chaotic energy with cape-wearing destiny. And it vanished in a puff of studio smoke.
Somewhere out there, Nic Cage is still ready to take flight. And somewhere deep inside me, I know I still believe in the Superman we never got.
Long live the Death of Superman Lives.
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