From Spider-Man 4 to Superman with Nicolas Cage | 7 super comic book productions that never left the paper

Today, comic book superheroes are the most reliable and profitable source for Hollywood blockbusters. And the laurels must go to Marvel. However, even today – or maybe a few years ago – these projects, from time to time, run into problems getting started. Whether it’s due to budget, studio pullback, or the people involved, whether it’s the director or the main cast, anything can become an obstacle when creating something of this size – even, as we have said, to be a very profitable business. Iconic and timeless symbols like Superman, Batman and Spider-Man are real money-making machines, but it takes a lot of care and planning to bring these symbolic characters into the third dimension of the big screen.

In fact, for every movie made with these specific characters, there are many more that ended up shutting down at various stages of their pre-production. In other words, there’s no shortage of subject matter for this type of material, since there are more movies of the genre that haven’t been made, than there are that have been made. To begin to demonstrate this, I bring below some of the most famous cases of blockbusters that generated high expectations, some even starting their production process, which simply did not move forward, frustrating the filmmakers and the audience even more – it’s always the audience that loses the most. . Check it out below, say if you knew all the cases and don’t forget to comment saying which of these you would most like to see in the cinema.

Exposed and continuing to be successful and generate big bucks for Warner, the new The Batman has received consistent praise from fans and the press. The Batman is another character that almost had several movies that never took off. In fact, we could list the only hero movies that never came to fruition. However, for this article, we have chosen one of the most interesting. Batman: Year One. This was the blueprint for the project that would become Batman Begins (2005), which as we know was the beginning of Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy.

After Batman & Robin (1997)’s, say, not very positive review – both financially and critically – Warner opted to revive the franchise, and some projects were released. The one chosen by the studio ended up being Batman: Year One, which would tell the story of how Bruce Wayne first donned the Batman costume. To command, the visionary Darren Aronofsky, then fresh out of Requiem for a Dream (2000). The filmmaker wanted Joaquin Phoenix in the main role of the hero, and a film with a large audience, with a lot of violence. In the end, Warner backed off on such a weighty vision, but as said, they used many of those ideas in Batman Begins.

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Spider-Man: No Return Home is one of the biggest hits in cinema and certainly the biggest hit of last season. The partnership between Marvel and Sony to bring the hero to the MCU turned out to be a very good idea, making fans happy. Some time ago, 20 years to be exact, the world was celebrating another Spider-Man, the first. Directed by Sam Raimi, the hero’s original film was a real stir and opened the doors to the genre, showing Hollywood that the comic book source material could be hugely profitable if done right. After the third film, in 2007, which received mixed reviews but a good box office, Raimi still aspired to make not one more film, but two.

Spider-Man 4 and 5 were on the director’s and studio’s agenda. Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst were also in the game, and the director could finally play the Vulture, his favorite villain, on the big screen – a role that would go to John Malkovich. Another who was practically signed was Anne Hathaway as Felicia Hardy, the black cat – although some sources claim that in the film she would transform into a female version of the Vulture. Hathaway eventually became the Catwoman in The Dark Knight Rises. There is also talk of Rachel McAdams in a role in the feature film. Filming would begin in 2010, for a 2011 release – however, the tight schedule and script for a reboot being produced at the same time (in case Raimi’s film didn’t work), eventually caused the filmmaker to drop out on the fourth movie. A great pity.

Black Panther (2018) is definitely one of Marvel’s biggest hits and one of the biggest cinematic hits of recent times. Extremely representative, the feature film by Ryan Coogler was nominated for the Oscar for best film. This year, we’ll be honored with the sequel Black Panther: Wakanda Forever in November, which promises to break new ground and overcome the lack of protagonist Chadwick Boseman. Before the MCU blockbuster, however, the African superhero nearly hit theaters in the 1990s and would have none other than Wesley Snipes as the protagonist. Snipes was very invested in the production, very excited to bring the important character to the big screen. It would have been a very different movie than the one we actually won, after all, times are different now. Apart from that, the reality of superhero movies was also different in the early 1990s – a time when the actor had success with movies like White Men Can’t Bury and Passenger 57. The production even had a scenario, but it was not. for the front. A few years later, Snipes would finally manage to become a comic book character with Blade – The Vampire Hunter (1998), one of the cornerstones of the foundation of genre cinema.

It’s one of the newest examples on the list, and one that might even take off at some point in the future. Who knows? The character is part of Marvel’s nearly limitless collection of mutants within the X-Men franchise. It’s a universe almost as rich and full of characters as all of Marvel itself. After the X-Men film trilogy, which ended in 2006, the plan for 20th Century Fox, the studio that owned the rights, was to create solo spin-offs for certain characters. The first, of course, was the most popular of them, Wolverine, personified by star Hugh Jackman – who won his own trilogy. Second on the list would be the villainous Magneto, a project that was rebranded as X-Men: First Class (2011). After Ryan Reynolds campaigned and was ahead of Project Deadpool (2016) to get the movie released the right way, Fox quickly cast Channing Tatum to lead the solo film Gambit. For years, the actor and the studio tried to get the project off the ground, with the film even being postponed to 2019 and 2020. However, with Disney’s acquisition of Fox, production was halted completely at this point. But as said, he may see the light at some future time.

The greatest comic book hero, many would say, Superman was the first such character to win a franchise on the big screen. During the 1980s, the Superman films were very successful in theaters, until the cold result of the fourth and final feature in 1987. After that, in the 1990s, Warner looked for a way to revitalize the brand, and thought to projects that range from a direct sequel to a reboot. Or maybe a mixture of both. So director and screenwriter Kevin Smith was brought in to write the story, which was supposed to have a giant spider, polar bears and a robotic partner, were the requests of eccentric producer Jon Peters.

When director Tim Burton was hired to direct, Smith left and the script was changed to count Lex Luthor (Kevin Spacey), Brainiac (Jack Nicholson), and Doomsday as the villainous trio. Sandra Bullock and Courteney Cox were up for the role of Lois Lane, and Chris Rock had been cast as the new Jimmy Olsen. Ah yes, the protagonist would be played by Nicolas Cage – we’re sure you’ve already seen the costume tests of the actor in the role – and the plot would be based on the Death of Superman comics. Indeed, it was one of the closest projects to getting started, with Superman Lives set to premiere in 1998. There’s even a behind-the-scenes documentary with interviews from everyone, including Kevin Smith and Tim Burton. , titled The Death of Superman Lives – What Happened?

One of Marvel’s most laudable triumphs in filmmaking was bringing in characters from the publisher’s B-team and turning them into major movie stars. That was even the case with his first movie, after all Iron Man wasn’t a product on the same level as Spider-Man or the X-Men. Regardless, the MCU continued to introduce brands unknown to the general public, see Guardians of the Galaxy, and mine gold from them. That’s what Casa de Ideias continues to do today, with Shang-Chi and Eternals, for example. Everything is planned thoroughly and well in advance, making Marvel Studios one of the most calculating production companies in Hollywood today. We’ll barely see an announced movie ever hit the shelves. But there is a precedent. This is the case with Inhumans, the premiere of which is scheduled for 2018, postponed to 2019 and then indefinitely. It’s curious that star Vin Diesel was hired on a double deal with the studio, would voice the alien tree Groot, from Guardians of the Galaxy, and be the physical form of mute Black Bolt from the Inhumans. But it was a project that Marvel swept under the hood, taking it off their schedule. Some say it was because of Spider-Man’s entry into the MCU, others say it was because of the TV series’ poor reception with the characters in 2017. It’s even possible that the project evolved into the movie Eternals in 2021.

“Who is Jack Snyder?” Long before director Zack Snyder delivered his (double) version of Justice League, the project nearly saw the light of day in the mid-2000s. Speaking of another project that nearly took off, just like Superman Lives, the first DC supergroup film is one of the most famous to become urban legends than it could have been. With the title Justice League – Mortal, the director and cast had been hired, the film had a script and was already in pre-production, canceled due to taxes. George Miller from the Mad Max movies was in charge and cast Armie Hammer as Batman, DJ Cotrona as Superman, Megan Gale as Wonder Woman, Adam Brody as The Flash, Common as Green Lantern, Santiago Cabrera as Aquaman, Hugh Keays-Byrne as Manhunter and Zoe Kasan as Iris Allen. The villains would be Maxwell Lord, played by Jay Baruchel and Talia al Ghull, played by Teresa Palmer – this before Pedro Pascal and Marion Cotillard played the antagonists in the films Wonder Woman 1984 and The Dark Knight Rises, respectively. If the level of action and adrenaline was the same as in Mad Max – Fury Road, we would have finished.

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