In 1997, Kevin Smith was hired by Warner Brothers to write the script for a Superman movie. He was forced to write Superman without the power of flight and he had to fight a giant spider. The movie would’ve starred Nicolas Cage.
The Wildest Superman Movie Never Made: Cage vs. Spider
In the late 1990s, Warner Brothers greenlit what might have been the strangest Superman movie ever made. They hired filmmaker Kevin Smith to write the script, signed Nicolas Cage to wear the cape, and brought on gothic director Tim Burton to helm the project. But there was a catch—actually, several catches—that turned Superman Lives into Hollywood legend.
Producer Jon Peters had three non-negotiable demands for Smith's script. Superman couldn't fly because Peters thought it looked "fake." The iconic red and blue suit was out because Peters found it "too pink." And most bizarrely, the film's climax had to feature Superman fighting a giant spider.
The Giant Spider Obsession
Peters justified the spider mandate with confident conviction: "Spiders are the fiercest killers in the animal kingdom." Smith tried to work around the absurdity by not actually calling it a spider in the script—he named it a "Thanagarian snare beast"—but everyone knew what it really was.
The spider demand wasn't just a weird creative note. It was a full-blown obsession. Peters wanted to see a massive arachnid on screen, and Superman Lives was going to deliver it, whether it made sense or not.
What the Movie Would Have Been
Smith's script, dated March 27, 1997, focused on Superman's battle with Doomsday, the villain who famously killed the Man of Steel in the comics. Despite the bizarre restrictions, the screenplay was good enough to attract serious talent.
Nicolas Cage signed on to play Superman, a casting choice that raised eyebrows then and still does today. Tim Burton, fresh off his success with the Batman films, agreed to direct. Warner Brothers spent over $30 million on casting and pre-production alone.
But Smith's involvement ended when the studio brought in Wesley Strick for rewrites in 1997. Burton and Strick had a closer working relationship, and the project continued evolving—and getting weirder—without Smith's input.
The Project's Demise
Despite the massive investment and A-list talent, Warner Brothers eventually pulled the plug on Superman Lives. Creative differences, budget concerns, and the sheer strangeness of the vision all contributed to its cancellation. The film became one of Hollywood's most famous "what if" stories.
Peters never gave up on his giant spider dream, though. He went on to produce Wild Wild West in 1999, which featured—you guessed it—a giant mechanical spider. The obsession finally came full circle in 2023 when director Andy Muschietti included an alternate-universe cameo in The Flash, showing Nicolas Cage's Superman actually fighting a giant spider, 26 years after the original script.
Kevin Smith has told this story countless times in his stand-up routines and Q&A sessions, turning the Superman Lives saga into comedy gold. What could have been the strangest superhero movie ever made instead became the strangest superhero movie never made—and Hollywood is probably better off for it.