McG reveals details of his Superman movie that never was
Robert Downey Jr would have played Lex Luthor, if McG’s planned Superman movie had gone ahead…
Some time before Zack Snyder got the directorial gig on the reboot of the cinematic Superman franchise, it was McG who had been handed the keys to the Man Of Steel movies.
The director of the Charlie’s Angels films, Terminator: Salvation and more recently This Means War, was set to helm a new Superman adventure, and recently, he’s been nattering about his take on the project that never was.
McG’s film was to have been Flyby, which had been penned by JJ Abrams, and was widely reported to have altered the basic origin foundations of the Superman character.
So why did it fall apart? As McG confessed, it was his fear of flying, and Warner Bros’ insistence on filming the movie in Australia, that proved to be the deal breaker.
“We had Robert Downey Jr locked up to be Lex Luthor”, he told The Playlist, “which I think would have been extraordinary”. No Superman had been cast, although McG revealed that “ironically, we liked Henry Cavill a lot, but we hadn’t cast him yet”.
When the project fell apart, McG went on to make We Are Marshall instead, and Superman remained in limbo until Christopher Nolan took an interest. And that kickstarted the road to Man Of Steel, which will be heading to cinema screens in 2013...
