Tim Burton’s scrapped Nicolas Cage-starring ‘Superman Lives’ was nearly an animated film (Report)

Tim Burton’s scrapped Superman film that was meant to star Nicolas Cage was almost an animation.

Superman Lives went into development in the late 90s before eventually being scrapped. It was to be directed by Burton, written by Kevin Smith (Clerks) and produced by Jon Peters (Superman Returns), starring Cage as Superman. A documentary about the failed project, The Death of Superman Lives: What Happened?, was released in 2015.

Now, speaking at New York Comic Con, Michael Jelenic (co-writer of new animated film Batman vs Two-Face) revealed that Superman Lives nearly came to be as an animated film. “I had a big pitch, and they took it seriously for a second, to do Tim Burton’s Superman… to do that animated,” he said. When a reporter suggested that “Nic Cage would do it,” Jelenic replied: “He would absolutely do it!”

Kevin Smith has previously said that he would be keen on an animated version of Superman Lives, saying in 2016: “That would be really amazing to kind of see, like they turn it into a cartoon and get the people to do the voices. Nic Cage is still around and stuff. And I wanted Michael Rooker for my Lex Luther so that would be amazing. Um, but, you know, I’m game.”

Smith continued to say that the decision would ultimately be “up to the good folks at Warner Bros and stuff, but if they were ever to call and say hey we want to do a cartoon version of that Superman script we wrote, believe me I’d be like, that’d be dope man.”