Читать книгу The Rise of Comic Book Movies - Benny Potter - Страница 20

BEHIND THE SCENES: A BIRD, A PLANE, A MAN OF STEEL

BENNY

To begin, I think having a bit of background about the first movie within the franchise might help us understand the journey the Superman franchise has taken. Here is a collection of the production notes from the first movie in the series.

The first major big-budget superhero feature film, Superman, had the challenges of making flying believable, creating special effects without digital animation, and preserving Superman’s masculinity while he’s wearing tights. But it succeeded, in a big way.

The film rights for Superman, based on the DC Comics character introduced in 1938, were bought in 1974 by Pierre Spengler, and Ilya and Alexander Salkind. This team struck a deal with Warner Brothers, originally just for distribution of the film. They decided to film both Superman and Superman II simultaneously, which proved both exhausting and costly in the long run. Mario Puzo (author of The Godfather) wrote both screenplays and delivered them in 1975, but they were considered too long and not a good fit.

Various writing teams were brought in for rewrites until the final version was delivered about a year later. Richard Donner (The Omen) became the director. Robert Redford, Burt Reynolds, James Caan, Paul Newman, and several others turned down the Superman role.

After more than 200 auditions, they opted for an unknown actor: Christopher Reeve. Reeve was skinny but determined

[no image in epub file]

20