The Death of "Superman Lives": What Happened?

In the middle of the nineties a Superman film was prepared and never shot. The documentary describes what happened: the studio started the project, several screenplays were written, Tim Burton came on as director and Nicolas Cage was cast in the lead. A costume was made, tests were shot, designs were drawn and the budget grew. Then the project was stopped. The film opens each of these stages by talking to the people who worked on it. Jon Schnepp directs. The documentary dates from 2015. It was made with money raised from the public and distributed independently. Tim Burton, Kevin Smith and the producer Jon Peters speak directly in it; the accounts often do not agree. Its most concrete material is the visual archive: costume tests, design drawings and photographs not seen until then are shown. The matter the narrative builds is how decisions get made; why a film was not shot is tied to no single cause. The section on what the producer Peters wanted is the most told part, and other witnesses confirm the accounts. Its limit is method; the narrative is loose and the director's own curiosity comes forward at times. Who it is for: anyone curious about how films get made and about projects that were never shot. Who it is not for: it asks for context from anyone uninterested in the subject, and it is technically simple.