You read that correctly — some grainy but oh-so-sweet test footage of a young Nicolas Cage portraying Superman has made its way onto the interwebs, and it’s oh-so-weird.
Cage, who was announced to play Superman in the Tim Burton-directed ’90s movie Superman Lives, later lost the role when the project was scrapped, but images of the meme-friendly actor in costume have been surfacing since 2009.
Now, a new fan-funded documentary is hoping to tell the story of what Superman Lives could have been. Titled The Death Of Superman Lives: What Happened?, the documentary features interviews and test footage, including a great section of Cage footage which The LA Times has secured.
The footage sees Cage dressed as the Man Of Steel, stretching in his tight and shiny Superman suit. The documentary’s final trailer (below) shows Kevin Smith, who was Superman Lives‘ first screenwriter, saying:
“Now when you think about it, if somebody was just like, ‘Would you like to see a Nicolas Cage Superman movie?’ I’d be like, ‘Fuck and yes take all my money, because I want to see what that looks like.'”
Amen.
Superman Lives was rewritten several times but was never put into production. The next Superman film, Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice, will hit cinemas in May 2016. The film, sadly of course, will be Cage-less, and will instead star Ben Affleck as Batman and Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luthor.
Elsewhere in the Nicolas Cage universe, the actor was recently reimagined as a plethora of characters from Game Of Thrones, in a beautiful series of images known as Cage Of Thrones.
The Death Of Superman Lives: What Happened? will be released online on 9th July. Catch Cage in the film’s recent trailer, below, and his full Superman test footage over at The LA Times website.
