One of the best of the many, many, many stories that Kevin Smith has told over the years involves his role in a Superman movie that never happened. In his An Evening with Kevin Smith special, the Clerks writer and director talked about how producer Jon Peters had called on him to write a script for what would have been called Superman Lives, and Smith hilariously describes how Peters was obsessed with this idea of having the Man of Steel, played by Sean Penn, battle a giant spider, while the villain Brainiac would also have a fight scene with polar bears. The whole thing was a delightful mess, and it’s a shame that it was never made.
But now Smith has teamed with producer and director Jon Schnepp to help tell another story in the documentary The Death of Superman Lives: What Happened?, which is currently accepting donations toward the $85,000 goal that Schnepp needs to finish production. In this doc, Schnepp sits down with everyone from director Tim Burton to producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura to discuss the unfinished Superman Lives, which would have been helmed by Burton and starred Nic Cage as the man in the cape.
In order to make that push for the final $85K that he needs – which is completely broken down on the FanBacked page – Schnepp released a trailer to show us what Metropolis might have been like had Burton been behind the camera and our favorite over-actor flying through the sky.