Superman flies again . . . but can even he save Hollywood?

The Times ^ | May 6, 2006 | Chris Ayres

[MadIvan]

Sequels and franchises will dominate this summer as Tinseltown fights to lure people away from their DVDs and back to the cinema

WHAT can save Hollywood from another summer of dire sequels and box office catastrophes? Is it another documentary about exotic birds? Is it a story about a hijacked plane? No, silly — it’s Superman.

That, at least, is the hope in Hollywood, which collected only $3.6 billion (£2 billion) from American moviegoers last summer, its worst performance since 2001. Yet with summer releases accounting for up to 40 per cent of annual sales Hollywood is desperate for a caped hero to save the day.

“I told my wife somebody could have driven a car into my theatre and not hit anybody (last year),” complained one multiplex owner, at a recent movie industry conference in Las Vegas. “When you have a well-crafted, entertaining film that people will want to see, they will come out in record numbers.”

The National Association of Theatre Owners — and the rest of Hollywood — hopes that Superman Returns is such a film. It is due for launch in American cinemas on June 30. It will reach British cinemas a couple of weeks later.

The hype began this week with the first trailer for the movie, which will star a 26-year Iowan named Brandon Routh as the bumbling Clark Kent, who rips off his business suit to become the Man of Steel. Bryan Singer, the director, who made his name in Hollywood with the popular X-Men movies, justified casting a relatively unknown actor by saying that a known actor came with “baggage”.

“Superman is much larger than any actor. I wanted him to come just with the baggage of the superhero — that's enough history to contend with.” It was reported that James Caviezel was turned down by Mr Singer for the role of Superman because he was too famous after appearing as the Son of God in The Passion of the Christ.

The film’s star power will come from the other players. Lex Luthor, the semi-comic villain, will be played by Kevin Spacey, and the role of Superman’s crush — the ambitious Daily Planet news reporter Lois Lane — has been taken by 22-year-old Kate Bosworth.

It has been 68 years since Superman first appeared in Action Comics #1 (owned by DC Comics) and 28 years since the the first Superman film, directed by Richard Donner, who was already well-known for The Omen and The Twilight Zone. The production budget of the 1978 movie was $55 million. Superman Returns is expected to cost north of a quarter of a billion dollars.

The film — which has taken ten years and multiple writers to make — is an uncomfortable reminder of the fate of its original star, Christopher Reeve, who was paralysed from the neck down after a riding accident in 1995. After a long struggle with disability he died in 2004. His wife, Dana, died from lung cancer this year.

The trailer for Superman Returns begins with portentous music and the God-like voiceover of Superman’s father: “Even though you have been raised as a human being, you are not one of them!” It cuts to footage of Superman leaping through cornfields as a child, in homage to the original film.

Mr Singer has claimed that Superman Returns is not a sequel to the four movies in which Mr Reeve starred, although it begins after the battle between General Zod and his gang of Kryptonian villains. Superman has disappeared from Earth for six years while he searches for other survivors from his home planet. The plot involves him returning to Metropolis and resuming his identity of Clark Kent. He soon finds out that Ms Lane is in a relationship and has a son. The residents of Metropolis have learnt to live without Superman.

Although critics are generally more enthusiastic about this year’s roster of films, they have pointed out that the summer season is still dominated by franchises and sequels. Other big films of the summer include Mission: Impossible III and another X-Men instalment. There is also a remake of the 1972 hit The Poseidon Adventure, directed by Wolfgang Petersen.

“Everybody is concerned, but it looks like maybe the tide is turning,” Mr Petersen said about the 2006 release schedule. “We have been killing ourselves to get something really exciting out there.”

There are many other familiar-sounding summer releases, including remakes of sequels to Miami Vice, The Fast and the Furious and Pirates of the Caribbean. Later in the year there will even be a new James Bond film, Casino Royale. Original projects include The Da Vinci Code, based on Dan Brown’s bestseller book, starring Tom Hanks as the scholar who unravels the deepest secret of the Roman Catholic Church. Animated films — a huge genre, thanks to Shrek — will include Cars, from Disney/Pixar, and Over the Hedge, from rival studio Dreamworks.

Owners of film theatres are not betting everything on the boy from Krypton. Terrified that the public has exchanged nights out at the movies for nights in with DVDs and surround-sound home theatre systems, multiplexes are testing ways to make going to the movies more pleasant.

Ideas include offering electronic tickets via mobile phones and using technology to block mobile phone signals while movies are playing. Other ploys may include shortening pre-film advertising. In Hollywood the Arclight cinema lets moviegoers book seats as though they were on an airline and offers a bar service, espressos, digital projectors and a restaurant.

The cinema owners acknowledge that the most important factor is one over which they have no control: the quality of films. If the Man of Steel can’t save the summer blockbuster, they ask, then who can? The pressure is clearly being felt by Routh. “If I really sat down and thought about all the possible implications, the good, amazing things it could mean, you could go a little crazy,” he said.

Superman Returns was initially supposed to be directed by Brett Ratner, but he left the project after reported clashes with Warner Bros over casting. It is thought that actors including Ashton Kutcher, Brendan Fraser and Josh Hartnett were considered to play the man who is faster than a speeding bullet and more powerful than a locomotive. By 2001 McG (as Joseph McGinty Nichol is known) was tipped to direct, but he left in 2002 to make Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, returning to Superman in 2004. He left for good after reported disagreements over budgets and locations.

Mr Singer was chosen to replace him because the studio was impressed by Batman Begins and thought that the X-Men director could create the a similar noir atmosphere. The director also agreed to shoot the film in Australia. The Kent farm in Smallville was shot in Tamworth, New South Wales.

Superman Returns is expected to include footage of Marlon Brandon as Superman’s father from the original movie. General Zod will not appear because Mr Singer could not persuade Jude Law to accept the role and did not want anyone else to play it.

IS IT A BIRD...

#

The 1938 comic-book Superman's skills were relatively limited. He could lift a car above his head, leap an eighth of a mile and was vulnerable to all projectiles larger than an artillery shell

# By the 1980s Superman could fly into space, had x-ray vision, moved planets out of orbit and could survive a nuclear blast

#

The first Superman movie, which came out in 1978, starring Christopher Reeve, spawned three sequels in the following nine years as well as the disastrous 1984 movie Supergirl #

Between them, the films grossed $330m at the US box office alone #

The original Superman cost $110m to make, Superman Returns will cost $200m-plus #

The late Marlon Brando, who played Superman’s father in the first movie, will be digitally recreated to appear in this summer’s Superman Returns. Clark Kent’s home farm in the film was built on a sound stage, disassembled and moved to Australia where it was rebuilt

# DC Comics are releasing four comic books to explain the events that shaped Superman’s life between his last big screen appearance and Superman Returns

#

Studios are confident that Superman Returns will be a success — there are already plans for a sequel

COMING SOON TO A CINEMA NEAR YOU: THE SUMMER BLOCKBUSTER

Mission: Impossible III (opened yesterday) Tom Cruise returns to the screen as everyone’s second-favourite secret agent, Ethan Hunt. This time he abandons cushy retirement to battle a sadistic arms dealer, Owen Davian, (Philip Seymour Hoffman). M:i III, as it likes to be known, is the most expensive of the three Mission: Impossible films, with a budget of $150 million (£80 million).

The Da Vinci Code (May 19) The movie least likely to make it to the Pope’s DVD player might not have even made it into our cinemas if the recent court case had had its way. Copyright assured, the film of Dan Brown’s book looks easily set to recoup its estimated $125 million budget when it opens in a fortnight. Tom Hanks plays Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon; French actress Audrey Tatou is his cryptologist sidekick, Sophie Neveu.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (July 7) In one of the many sequels of the summer, Johnny Depp reprises his role as pirate Jack Sparrow. In debt to Davey Jones, he battles to save his soul from eternal damnation in the afterlife while trying to save the wedding of Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) and Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley).

World Trade Center (September 29) Oliver Stone directs the second of the year’s movies to dramatise the events surrounding the terrorist attacks on September 11, the other being United 93. The action is based on the true story of the last two people to be extracted alive from the World Trade Centre, officers John McLaughlin (Nicholas Cage) and William Jimeno (Michael Pena).

The Omen 666 (working title, June 6) Thankfully there have not been 665 Omen films since the 1976 classic about a couple who had the misfortune to adopt a satanic baby. This instalment, cleverly opening on 06.06.06, is a remake of the original and stars Julia Stiles, Liev Schreiber and Pete Postlethwaite.

Poseidon (June 2) The director Wolfgang Peterson gambled $175 million on this remake of the 1972 film The Poseidon Adventure, which cost $5 million and grossed $84 million in the US. As in the original, a boat capsizes and survivors clamber through the bowels of the ship to safety. Stars Kurt Russell and Richard Dreyfuss.

[MadIvan]

Not looking good...for Hollywood that is, film otherwise will thrive.

Regards, Ivan

[MadIvan]

Ping!

[AnotherUnixGeek]

WHAT can save Hollywood from another summer of dire sequels and box office catastrophes?

Decent scripts, decent direction, and decent acting. Good luck finding any of that in Mission Impossible:3 and the other explosion laden dreck out there. The best movie of the summer is likely to be one that features no live actors - Pixar's animated feature "Cars".

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

***and 28 years since the the first Superman film,***???

The first Superman film was made in the 1940's and in the 1950's George Reeves made one about little men from inside the earth.

[weegee]

ANOTHER REMAKE.

Yawwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwn.

We know the origin of Superman. It isn't that great a story. You want to tell a Superman story, tell a story about this guy. But not THAT story again.

[weegee]

Wasn't that a feature edited down from the adventure serials?

The Fleischer Bros. cartoons from the WWII era did a good job of capturing the look and feel of the Sigel and Schuster comic books.

[Darkwolf377]

This is the monthly "Can Hollywood be saved?" story. The exagerrations in this piece--driving a car through a theater and not hitting anybody, i.e. nobody going to the movies--is such bunk. They make it sound like the Hollywood economy is in the toilet.

It's not making as many megabucks as before, but it comes and goes, and always has since TV came along.

This movie won't "save" Hollywood anymore than the last movie to "Save Hollywood" did, be it Star Wars, King Kong, The Passion, etc. etc.

I won't see this movie because Superman, simply put, is boring; the movies I saw about him were boring, Superman 1 being one of the great schizo movies ever: epic and beautiful up to the point where Reeves shows up, then dominated by boring TV show characters and a silly villain. Also, it's directed by Bryan Singer, whose X-Men movies are among the most overrated genre exercises in years.

I'm looking forward to Mission Impossible 3, which I've heard from people who've seen it has a good story and characters; The Fountain, because it is genuinely weird; and X-Men 3, because I read the comics as a kid and need SOMEthing big and epic-looking.

The problem with Hollywood is not with the direction or acting, which are both fine generally, or with the craftsmen and women, who are at their most polished. It's with the producers, who are back in the driver's seat with more power than ever, their roles more like those of television producers rather than just financial officers; the writers, who go along with the dictates of these people because they get paid buckets of cash to write crap and that's what they deliver, polished crap with snappy comebacks and little character interest; and yes, the audience, which keeps this crap at the top of the box office.

I get bored with people bitching about Hollywood because if we didn't pay to see this stuff, they wouldn't make it.

[jwh_Denver]

Poseidon

They're chiseling at the bottom of the barrel.

Superman 43?

[Centurion2000]

That, at least, is the hope in Hollywood, which collected only $3.6 billion (£2 billion) from American moviegoers last summer, its worst performance since 2001. Yet with summer releases accounting for up to 40 per cent of annual sales Hollywood is desperate for a caped hero to save the day.

Stop putting out liberal, pudding-eating gay cowboy movies and start with some fresh APOLITICAL or conservative ideas and you will get record crowds.

[peggybac]

I'm tired of remakes and wish the high paid writers and studio heads could actually be creative instead of constantly remaking old flicks. That said, I adore Brandon Routh and hope the film succeeds for his sake.

[Centurion2000]

I can think of at least 3-4 book series that would make awesome fodder for movies.

Posleen Wars Series : John Ringo
1632 series : Eric Flint
Honor Harrington series : David Weber
Term Limits : Vince Flynn
The Bear and the Dragon / Executive Orders : Tom Clancy
Civil War series How Few Remain : Harry Turtledove

There are PLENTY of new ideas and plots that can come to the screen without many problems.

[Paleo Conservative]

Is Hollywood even worth saving?

[jwh_Denver]

"Maybe if Hollyweird started trying to create ORIGINAL ideas instead of remakes of great moves and crappy tv shows"

I agree with both you guys. Remakes just plain suck. Heck, if they wanted a good movie just grab the writers of "24".

[staytrue]

Superman Returns is expected to cost north of a quarter of a billion dollars. ...which has taken ten years and multiple writers to make

It's a bird, it's a plane, no it is the biggest box office bomb ever.

[staytrue]

I think the tv show "smallville" is actually pretty good.

[The Foolkiller]

Lex Luthor, the semi-comic villain, will be played by Kevin Spacey

---

Dear God. They're going to do it AGAIN. When will Hollywood learn that Lex Luthor is NOT a stand-up comedian? That was what REALLY turned me off about the Chris Reeves movies. The only one worth a damn was the second one, which Zod's character saved, because it was played straight. Believe I'll avoid this one like the plague.

[Rastus]

The new trailer for this actually came out a couple of days ago:

http://www.apple.com/trailers/wb/supermanreturns/hd/

I think it's pretty terrible myself. After Michael Rosenbaum played Lex Luthor as a real human being, this Gene Hackmanesque parody is tough to take.

[Rastus]

Wait until you see the trailer. Spacey really sucks the life out of it.