A few weeks later, Peters was invited to attend Smith's Chasing Amy premiere as a special guest. According to Kevin, Peters didn't really seem to enjoy watching the movie very much, but he did really like the gay black guy in it. He liked his voice and wanted it in the movie as a little robot sidekick to Brainiac. He actually is quoted as saying he wanted "a gay R2D2 with attitude." At this point in 1997, the original Star Wars trilogy was in re-release and had opened up tremendously the previous weekend. If he couldn't have the little robot, Peters was also open to having a cute dog following Brainiac around. He just wanted something else he could make toys and merchandise out of and sell to kids. It was pretty obvious at this point that Jon Peters slept with a George Lucas bedspread.

Not long after the premiere ended, Tim Burton signed on to direct and Nicolas Cage signed on to play the Man of Steel. Both were inked to very large "pay or play" contracts, which meant that if the movie was made or not, they would still get paid. Cage made $20 million and Burton was set to pocket $5 million. Burton decided he wanted to scrap Smith's script and get his own people to write one, even though it would retain a lot of the ideas Peters and Smith wrote together. But of course, this is Burton's new movie...presumably one where Superman has scissors for hands.

An Attempt At Making A Movie

Casting was beginning to take shape. Along with life-long comic fan Cage, Kevin Spacey was approached to play Clark Kent's nemesis, Lex Luthor. Tim Allen claims to this day he was in talks to play Brainiac...I guess with more power . A studio writer, who ended up penning the script for Burton wrote the role for Jim Carrey, but he turned it down after just playing The Riddler in Batman Forever . Casting for Lois Lane was reportedly between Cameron Diaz and Courtney Cox. Unbelievably, Chris Rock was the only one being considered for the role of Jimmy Olson, the nerdy photographer for The Daily Planet newspaper. I can't really see Rock wearing a bow-tie and saying "Mr. Kent." This is only a rumor that I've read, but Tim Burton wanted Hulk Hogan to play Doomsday. At the time, Hogan was a huge moneymaker for World Championship Wrestling with the New World Order storyline. It's a shame, this could have been the worst movie ever made.

There were a couple smaller redeeming qualities, but I doubt it would have made a huge difference. Michael Keaton was supposed to make a cameo as Bruce Wayne, possibly setting up a sequel where we would see Superman and Batman either fighting alongside, or against, each other. Also, Industrial Light & Magic was signed to provide all the visual effects for the movie.

Warner Brothers and Tim Burton may have been pushing forward and trying to make it happen, but ever since Kevin Smith was fired from the project, ideas only seemed to go downhill. In the chopping up and constant script changing, Lex Luthor and Brainiac somehow became melded together to create "Lexiac." The sun was being blocked out by a metal disk to weaken the solar-powered Superman straight out of an episode of The Simpsons when Mr. Burns did it to make money. My god, can anyone in Hollywood have an original idea!