Arrowverse producer Marc Guggenheim teased the possibility that Nicolas Cage was approached to appear as Superman in Crisis On Infinite Earths. While Cage never actually played Superman in a movie, he was to have portrayed the last Son of Krypton in the 1998 movie Superman Lives, the production of which was cancelled three weeks prior to when filming was scheduled to begin.

Superman Lives was to be based on the famous arc The Death of Superman, in which he and the Kryptonian monster Doomsday beat each other to death, with Kal-El being later revived after a number of impostors try to usurp his position. The arc was ultimately adapted in the DC animated movies, first somewhat loosely in Superman: Doomsday, and then somewhat more faithfully in two parts of The Death of Superman and Reign of the Supermen. An early script written by Kevin Smith generated initial interest, but was heavily reworked to incorporate elements that had little to nothing to do with the comics and had undue emphasis on potential merchandising. The project was eventually abandoned due to concerns over its cost, and the events surrounding the production were chronicled in 2015 documentary The Death of Superman Lives: What Happened?

Twitter user OPLacerda posted a tweet featuring an image of Superman from a poster for Man of Steel photoshopped with Cage’s face taken from a still from the ‘90s action movie Con Air, with the shading heightened away from the muted tones of Henry Cavill’s debut and instead to the primary colors of Superman’s costume as depicted in the comics. Guggenheim was tagged with the challenge of “do it you coward,” to which Guggenheim responded with a simple: “What makes you think we didn’t reach out.”

Superman Lives would have been more than a simple acting job for Cage, who is a long-time fan of the character, to the extent that he named his son Kal-El. He also once owned a nearly pristine copy of Action Comics #1 (which saw the character’s debut) that was stolen from his house in 2000 and recovered in 2011 after being discovered among the contents of an abandoned storage locker, then and sold at auction later that year for over $2 million, the first comic to ever do so. Cage himself eventually partially realized his dream of playing Superman by voicing the character in Teen Titans Go! To the Movies.

Guggenheim appears to be joking, if for no other reason than if there was ever the possibility for Crisis On Infinite Earths to include Cage as Superman, then it’s highly unlikely this is the first we would be hearing about it. It would certainly have been a unique experience to see Cage’s interpretation of the character, even with the three other versions of Superman who are already set to feature, but unless there’s a major surprise in store, imagining how such a performance could have been realized is as far as we’re going to get.

Next: Everything We Know About Arrowverse’s Crisis on Infinite Earths Crossover

Source: OPLacerda