Tim Burton's cancelled Superman Lives is the most famous Superman film that never was, and now, just to add another missed opportunity to the list, it's been revealed that the project almost came to life as animation too.
Speaking at New York Comic Con this week, Michael Jelenic, one of the co-writers for the animated film Batman vs Two-Face, revealed that he once pitched an animated version of the Tim Burton project to Warner Bros – and that the studio did actually consider it.
"I had a big pitch, and they took it seriously for a second," Jelenic said (via CBR). "To do Tim Burton's Superman… to do that animated."
And when someone suggested that Nicolas Cage, who was attached to star as Superman in the original project, would happily work on an animated movie, Jelenic agreed.
"He would absolutely do it!" he replied.
Cage was attached to the Tim Burton film in the '90s before it was cancelled in 2001. The pair even got as far as testing footage of Cage wearing the iconic Spandex, shown in the documentary The Death of Superman Lives: What Happened?.
Over the years we've had lots of reports about what Tim Burton's Superman film would have been like, with Burton's collaborator Dan Gilroy revealing that Clark Kent would have been psychologically traumatised.
"Our Superman was in therapy at the beginning of the film," Gilroy explained. "He's hoping that he has some physiological condition that gives him these powers but that he's still human.
"It becomes very apparent, though, early in the script, when Lex Luthor uncovers the remnants of the spacecraft, he suddenly realises, 'Oh my god, I'm an alien'. It was all about the psychological trauma of it. I loved it."
For Nicolas Cage's part, it seems he's not too upset that it didn't get made in the end, saying that it now exists in the public's imagination.
"I had great belief in that movie and in what Tim Burton's vision was going to be for that movie," he said in 2015. "I would've loved to have seen it, but I feel that in many ways, it was sort of a win/win because of the power of the imagination.
"I think people can actually see the movie in their minds now and imagine it, and in many ways that might resonate more deeply than the finished project."
