The producer who pitched Sean Penn as Superman: “He’s got the eyes of a violent animal”
There have been a dizzying amount of different Supermen over the years, for some reason he is the figure that Hollywood studios come back to time and again, to reboot endlessly, most recently with James Gunn’s effort in 2025. A string of actors have slipped into the blue and red lycra, but surely Sean Penn would have been a stretch?
I mean, he’s not the biggest guy around so maybe the suit itself wouldn’t have been a stretch, but put simply he just doesn’t look like a Clark Kent, let alone the Man of Steel himself. But according to one producer who was working on a mooted Tim Burton version of the Kryptonite-fearing cape wearer in the late 1990s, that was something that was on the cards at one point.
Around that time, Kevin Smith, he of Clerks and Jay and Silent Bob fame, had penned a script for a movie called Superman Lives, a movie that was being developed by Warner Bros in 1996 that would have had Burton direct in a reimagining of the series that had last been seen a decade earlier with 1987’s disastrous Superman IV: The Quest For Peace starring Christopher Reeve.
And according to Smith, one producer had an unusual suggestion when it came to casting the most famous superhero of them all. He told The Hollywood Reporter: “(Producer) Jon Peters was like, ‘I want Sean Penn to play Superman.’ He had just seen (1995 thriller) Dead Man Walking, and he goes, ‘Look at his eyes in that movie. He’s got the eyes of a violent animal, a caged killer.’ And I was like, ‘Bro, it’s Superman!’”
Peters responded by asking Smith who he ideally saw in the role, with the writer replying: “I always loved Nic Cage, so I was like, ‘Nic Cage loves Superman. He talks about knowing the comics real well. You guys should go after Nic Cage.’ And so when Tim Burton got hired, and suddenly they were going with Nic Cage, I was like, wow, I had an idea and somebody took it seriously.”
The movie actually got a long way into production. Cage was indeed cast, and some $30m was spent on the film, but Peters was far from done with his demands of Smith, asking that he write in several scenes and characters, some of which were done solely for merchandising’s sake. Once Burton saw the script, he ordered a rewrite to be done, and Smith was off the movie.
Budgets were lowered and sets were built but left unused amidst what was an undeniable low point for superhero films in general. Once 1997’s Batman and Robin had failed at the box office, Warner Bros put Superman Lives on hold, then abandoned it after Burton decided to direct Sleepy Hollow instead.
As for Penn, he made Michael Douglas’ clever thriller The Game in 1997, and thus far in a more than 40 year career he has never got the chance to star in any kind of superhero film, let alone pull on those famous blue tights. But it’s not like he hasn’t done alright without it, he is one of only eight actors in cinema history to win three Oscars, for 2003’s Mystic River, 2008’s Milk and then last year for Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another.
And Cage did eventually get to play Superman, almost thirty years on, albeit in a de-aged cameo appearance in DC Comic’s The Flash in 2023.
