What Went Wrong: 13 Disastrous Comic Book Movies (And Why They Sucked)
2. The Studio - Superman Lives
In some alternate universe, we got to see a Superman movie with Nic Cage as the Man Of Steel, but thanks to a production story so notorious it inspired its own movie, it was never meant to be as it was canned just three weeks before filming was set to start.
The Cause
As Kevin Smith revealed long ago, Superman Lives was beset early on by studio interference. He had a whole bit in his stand-up tour about what the executives wanted him to put in - including a giant evil mecahnical spider - and some of the revelations are as horrifying as they are hilarious.
But Smith's script was just one stage of development that stretched out some distance, taking in several script rewrites that somehow led to the ridiculous Dan Gilroy version that was approved. Reading it back now you have to wonder how it ever got to the table, but it was allegedly the script that killed the project, with Warner Bros unhappy with it. A rare moment of clarity from the studio at the time.
It also didn't help that the studio had lost big on a couple of flops, including Wild Wild West, which had featured the spider concept Kevin Smith had been "invited" to use in his film. They simply couldn't afford to make another loser, so they scrapped it.
How Disastrous Was It?
Well, not being made is pretty disastrous for any movie.