Nicolas Cage Looks Like a Perfect Superman in New Canceled '90s Film Photo—He's Got the Whole Package!

The actor, now, 51, was once cast as the Man of Steel in a Superman film that was to be directed by Tim Burton

By Corinne Heller Jul 15, 2015 2:55 PMTags

If there was any doubt that Nicolas Cage would have been a simply perfect Superman, that should be gone faster than a speeding bullet.

The Oscar-winning actor was once cast as the Man of Steel in a '90s Superman film that was to be directed by Tim Burton and ended up never being produced. The movie, Superman Lives, is the topic of the 2015 documentary The Death of Superman Lives: What Happened?, which was released on July 9 on DVD, Blu-ray and VOD. Its director, Jon Schnepp, posted on Twitter on Tuesday a photo of Cage wearing the traditional blue, red and yellow Superman costume.

Just look at him. The hair. The smoldering stare. The way his vibrant, colorful costume molds perfectly to his body. He's got the whole package. Just magnificent!

The documentary also contains footage of the actor's 1997 costume test for Superman Lives, which shows him modeling a mostly blue Superman bodysuit in front of Burton and testing its flexibility.

Kevin Smith was originally tapped to write the script for the movie, while Sandra Bullock was to play Lois Lane, Chris Rock was tapped for the role of Jimmy Olsen, Christopher Walken was cast as the supervillain Brainiac and Kevin Spacey was supposed to play Superman's main nemesis, Lex Luthor. The latter ended up playing the part in Bryan Singer's 2006 movie Superman Returns.

Cage is such a big Superman fan that he named his 9-year-old son Kal-El, the superhero's real name.

The actor had talked about Superman Lives on the Empire Podcast in 2013. He called Burton a "genius" and added that "in a way, it was a win-win for me that it didn't work out, because the power of the imagination [allows you to] imagine what that might have been like. That might be even more powerful than the finished product, so I think it worked out."