Two months ago, Tim Burton cruised over Pittsburgh's Fort Pitt bridge and took a final glance at the steely downtown skyline. The director planned to spend his summer here directing Nicolas Cage in Superman Lives, and on this trip, Burton, accompanied by his producer and his production designer, was choosing final locations. By the time the trio boarded the plane back to L.A., a glass-exterior, Philip Johnson-designed office building had been rechristened Lex Luthor's lair, and the classical City-County Building had been chosen to headquarter the Daily Planet.

Meanwhile, at the New York offices of DC Comics, Superman's birthplace and home for the last 60 years, an artist was imposing a picture of the limpid-eyed Cage onto a sketch of Superman. Perhaps Cage as Superman was no more odd a prospect than Michael Keaton as Batman. Perhaps, thought the cartoonist, doodling an S curl onto Cage's forehead, this could work after all.

But on May 1, Warner Bros. quietly shut down the production office of Superman Lives, where, for the last year, designers had churned out sketches and producers had watched the film's budget soar above $100 million. At the same time, Warner cochair Terry Semel announced that on the heels of such expensive disasters as The Postman and Sphere, it would be scaling back on "big event movies" and focusing more on mid-priced films. (The decision, following a brutal year for the studio at the nation's cineplexes, ironically comes at a time when Warner's TV division has helped boost Time Warner to record overall earnings.) The studio is also likely to reduce the overall number of films it releases every year, a strategy Disney is pursuing as well.

While the studio made no mention of the closed production office and offered assurances that the Burton-Cage project was still in active development, Superman Lives became, in that moment, a painfully ironic title. While countless movies have taken a tour of duty in development hell, the sudden derailing of a film on which a studio has already committed upward of $30 million in talent deals and preproduction costs is almost without precedent.

Yet just this March, Fox and Universal scotched plans muchearlier in the game for their own expensive live-action comic-book films, Fantastic Four and The Incredible Hulk, when projected costs started to spin out of control, and Warner itself decided to put the brakes on a $100 million-plus Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle called I Am Legend. Has Hollywood, which has seen its domestic profits dwindle in an overstuffed movie marketplace, suddenly decided that, Titanic notwithstanding, bigger isn't better? Possibly. Five years in the non-making, Superman is the story not only of a troubled project, but of an industry suddenly--if sloppily--changing its ways.

In the late '80s and early '90s, Warner Bros. had a reputation for big spending--and for big profits. Conservative in its formulaic approach to films (big, expensive stars in high-concept, action-heavy, Oscar-challenged enterprises) and freewheeling in its funding, the studio's coffers had recently been filled with more than $750 million, thanks to two Batmans and three Lethal Weapons. Uniting, reuniting, and re-reuniting larger-than-life characters with larger-than-life effects, it seemed, could keep the corporate Gulfstream jets aloft for years.

In November 1993, the studio thought it had spotted its next billion-dollar franchise when it purchased the rights to produce Superman movies from Alexander Salkind. (Salkind and his son, Ilya, were behind the four Superman films that starred Christopher Reeve--Warner distributed the first three, between 1978 and 1983; Cannon Films handled the fourth, 1987's Superman IV: The Quest for Peace.) Batman and Batman Returns had performed strongly at the box office, and superheroes seemed a sure way of securing lucrative tie-ins with toy companies and fast-food chains. "The idea of the comic franchise had been established by Batman, and Superman is popular at our stores," says Warner Bros. president of production Lorenzo di Bonaventura. "It's a good product we're hoping to tap into."

In 1995, with ABC's Lois & Clark (also produced by Warner) a growing success, Batman producer Jon Peters took Superman in hand and approached Warner Bros. staff writer Jonathan Lemkin, who had just completed the first Lethal Weapon 4 script. Lemkin says he was given the instructions to "write a great movie," and fast: toy companies wanted to see a draft before the deadline for Toy Fair, the industry's annual show-fest.

Lemkin based his screenplay loosely on a plotline from The Life and Death of Superman, which had boosted the comic's sales enormously in 1993, and began his script with Superman in death throes, vanquished by an alien monster. As Lois Lane bends down to give her hero a final embrace, she is impregnated with Superman's spirit; Lane ultimately meets her own untimely death, but first manages to give birth to Superman Jr., who matures at warp speed and proceeds to save the universe.

Lemkin littered the story with nightmarish images to suggest that Armageddon was near. But the demolition of his script was nearer: Warner was preparing Batman Forever, "and some of the underlying themes were close," Lemkin remembers. "That concerned them, and they decided to go a whole new way."

Enter screenwriter No. 2, Gregory Poirier, who had recently worked with Peters on Rosewood. Poirier's Superman was more existential than Lemkin's--the hero struggles with feelings of alienation as an outsider on Earth--but no less dark. Comic-book villain Brainiac was the enemy, attempting to defeat Superman with the aid of a monster who bleeds Kryptonite. By the end of the script, Superman has exchanged his blue tights for a sleek black outfit, and Lane is finally getting the idea that Clark Kent may have powers beyond those of mortal men.

Poirier says Warner execs expressed their pleasure with the script, but months later, they asked indie screenwriter-director Kevin Smith, a superhero junkie who made 1997's Chasing Amy, a movie about two comic-book creators, for his input. Smith wasn't shy about expressing his opinion: "I said I thought it was terrible. Poirier didn't get the Superman mythos." ("I won't stoop to Kevin's level by dissing another writer's work," retorts Poirier.) When Smith agreed to stick to the death-of-Superman story line and keep Brainiac as the villain, Warner invited him on board. Smith's take was a more cheerful Superman Lives, in which the fleet hero battles the bad guys while murmuring lines to Lane (who, in this version, knows Clark's secret identity) like, "From now on, I'm going to be more man than super."

In August 1996, Smith was dispatched to recite his outline to Peters at the producer's mansion ("I thought he was dyslexic or something, but he likes to be read to"); one month later, he handed in his finished script. Smith says Warner professed delight, this time in part, no doubt, because it won the attention of Burton and Cage, as well as Kevin Spacey for the role of Brainiac and Chris Rock as Jimmy Olsen. But once Burton and Cage signed pay-or-play deals (according to insiders, Burton's is worth $5 million, Cage's $20 million), Smith's script became the latest to hit the dustbin.

"I was under the impression that Burton would at least have the courtesy to sit down with me," says Smith--who, ironically, is now under contract to write monthly superhero comics for both DC and Marvel. "He didn't." With Burton bringing in screenwriter Wesley Strick (The Saint), production was delayed until late spring 1997. (Di Bonaventura, while declining to comment on specifics within each script, says all four writers "have contributed creative elements that continue to be part of the overall mix.")

Warner's faith in Burton certainly didn't stem from his last directorial effort for the studio, the dismally performing and very expensive Mars Attacks! But Peters and Burton had worked well together on Batman, and the idea of reteaming them--with a push from Cage--seemed promising. What the studio didn't count on was that the combination of the F/X-happy director and the '80s-holdover producer would result in a budget that soared, some estimate, to between $140 and $190 million. "It's not like building a house," says Di Bonaventura. "You're creating a world where a guy flies around, something new where it takes a lot of time between when you create a wild scene and when ILM puts a price tag on it. We were never able to wrestle the budget down."

"We didn't have a script we loved, and the budget was too high," acknowledges Warner cochairman Bob Daly. "When the budget started getting out of control, that's when we decided to pull the plug."

If Superman had proceeded on its original schedule, it would now be celebrating the comic book's 60th anniversary by engaging in a tooth-versus-cape competition with Godzilla. But on May 4, in place of invitations to a celebratory wrap party, 400 people received cards with a sketch of the Man of Steel lying in a coffin, asking them to attend a "Superman wake" thrown by a few rebellious Superman staffers at the Hollywood Athletic Club. (The organizers of the party, fearing that Warner execs wouldn't take kindly to the premature burial, eventually decided to cancel the shindig.)

Now, as Superman crew members search for work, Peters is producing another Warner "event" movie (Barry Sonnenfeld's Wild, Wild West, starring Will Smith), and Burton continues to work on the script (now in the hands of a fifth writer, Dan Gilroy) with input from Di Bonaventura. "We know we're getting close, but we're not there yet," says Di Bonaventura. "The creative process is imprecise at best, but over the last two or three months we've accelerated in a good way. But we had hoped to accelerate that way six months ago."

As for Cage, he's in a win-win situation with a guaranteed $20 million paycheck--but according to a colleague, he's also suffering from hurt feelings: "Nic stayed loyal without a screenplay and found out the plug had been pulled secondhand. Warner Bros. didn't handle it very well." ("We understand anyone being upset by a movie being pushed back," says Di Bonaventura. "It's a tough decision.")

On April 22, one week after Superman Lives was placed on hiatus, Warner officially dissolved the uneasy two-year partnership between copresidents of production Di Bonaventura and Bill Gerber (Gerber was given a production deal). Now, Di Bonaventura will have sole power under Daly and Semel, but he will also have no one with whom to share the burden of blame. With Batman & Robin earning only $107 million domestically (less than half what Burton's first Batman movie earned) and Lethal Weapon 4 looming as a make-or-break monster, there is general disbelief outside Warner's executive suites that Superman, in its current incarnation and with an almost inevitable nine-figure budget, will be made at all. Instead, many assume that it will be sidelined as Warner turns its focus to "mid-priced" (Hollywood-speak for $30-80 million) films. Says Di Bonaventura: "We have a mandate to make event pictures. But do you need four a summer? No. Do you need two or three? Probably. So hopefully, we'll make five [mid-priced films] as well as Superman."

The question is when--and how? "Part of the problem in Hollywood these days is they make movies from the release date backward," says Poirier. "If [Warner] is going to slow down, more power to them." In the wake of the past year's disappointing slate, it would certainly hurt Warner to take another public hit and admit that Superman Lives--at least this version--is dead. But some suggest that it will be far wiser for the studio to feel the sting of paying out Cage, Burton, and preproduction costs than trying to revive a franchise that currently has no heat (low ratings felled Lois & Clark in 1997, and sales of the comic books are easily outstripped by Marvel's X-Men and DC's own JLA).

Di Bonaventura says he'd be "shocked" if the studio didn't make the film--"I just spent two hours in a Superman meeting"--but acknowledges that Warner is proceeding with caution. "There's no corporate agenda to make less; there's a corporate agenda to make better," he says. "We have a cluttered marketplace, and we're facing incredibly high production, marketing, and star costs. When you make your bets, you want it to be a sure bet. And sometimes, that requires that you slow the process down."


ENTERTAINMENTWEEKLY: May 29, 1998 | News & Notes | Biz
PHOTO CREDITS: [ SupermanComic Book Image]