The Supermen that never were: Here are 5 scrapped Man of Steel movies ranked by their Oscar potential

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's a new Superman movie! DC Comics' flagship hero once again takes flight in James Gunn's universe re-launching blockbuster, which arrives in multiplexes on July 11 after years of false starts at getting a new Man of Steel-led feature film into production.

That's nothing new for this particular superhero franchise, though. Multiple live-action Superman feature films have soared headlong into dead ends in the decades since Richard Donner and Christopher Reeve first made audiences believe a man could fly on the big screen in 1978. Even the involvement of big-name directors like Tim Burton and George Miller or famous faces like Jude Law and Nicolas Cage couldn't overcome the Kryptonite that is development hell.

While the Last Son of Krypton isn't a regular presence at the Oscars — and Gunn's take likely won't change that — some of those never-made movies boasted elements that could have made them awards players. We paged through the Fortress of Solitude's archive of abandoned super-movies and ranked the five most high profile lost Superman stories based on their Oscar potential.

5. Superman: Reborn (1992)

Five years after Superman IV: The Quest for Peace ended Christopher Reeve's tenure as the Man of Steel, Superman: The Movie producers Ilya and Alexander Salkind hoped to tempt the actor out of retirement for one last hurrah. Working with Mark Jones and Cary Bates — who served as story consultants on the syndicated Superboy TV series, also from the Salkinds — the team crafted a tale that saw Superman seemingly dying in a fight with intergalactic nemesis Braniac and regaining his powers after an extended stint in Kandor, the last-surviving Kryptonian city that was spared destruction by being preserved in a bottle. (The script was written just prior to DC Comics killing off the Man of Steel in the mega-selling "Death of Superman" storyline.)

In a 2008 interview, Bates revealed that Superman: Reborn was in early pre-production when the Salkinds sold the film rights back to Warner Bros. The version of the script circulating online has a grander vision than the notoriously budget-conscious producers would have been able to pull off — complete with supersized spaceships and chatty robots — so the technical categories would have been a stretch. But Reborn does put a button on the romance between Reeve's Superman and Margot Kidder's Lois Lane that was so crucial to the first two movies. However unlikely, It would have been nice for them to have flown off into the sunset with Oscar nominations in hand.

4. Superman: Flyby (2004)

While Alias was taking flight on ABC, J.J. Abrams was simultaneously deep into developing an updated take on the Superman mythos that thoroughly departed from the earlier films. In this brave new world, Kal-El was still dispatched from Krypton to Earth as a child — but this time the planet didn't explode. Once grown-up and flying around as Superman, his tyrannical uncle sends a quartet of warriors to Earth who summarily defeat and kill him. But one round trip journey to Kryptonian heaven later, Kal-El emerges from the rematch victorious and makes a beeline for his native world, where the sequel would have taken place.

Warner Bros. was high on Abrams' radical rewrite of Superman lore, bringing in McG then Brett Ratner and then McG again to direct. Meanwhile, every young actor from Josh Hartnett to Brendan Fraser auditioned for the title role. "You feel kind of invincible, [like] 'I can fly,'" Fraser once said about his try-out. "The cape actually makes you think you have the power of flight even though you know you don’t." But when the script leaked online, an overwhelmingly negative response from fans — along with McG's decision to drop out a second time — helped scuttle the shoot. While Flyby certainly wouldn't have won any awards with the Comic-Con crowd, the enhanced role of Krypton's alien landscape and culture might have afforded the movie production design, makeup and costume consideration among Oscar voters.

3. Batman vs. Superman (2001)

No, not that one. Years before the Dark Knight and the Man of Steel bonded over their mother's shared name, Warner Bros. developed another crossover confrontation for its two flagship heroes. Seven screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker developed a premise with a punch-up by Akiva Goldsman that found a retired Bruce Wayne getting back into the crimefighting game after his bride-to-be is murdered by the Joker. Lex Luthor then exploits Bruce's grief to briefly turn the resurgent Batman against Superman until the dynamic duo realize the true puppet master pulling their strings.

The late Wolfgang Petersen was enlisted to direct that first attempt at a live-action World's Finest meet-up, while then-rising stars Colin Farrell and Jude Law were the leading contenders to play Batman and Superman, respectively. "It was so dark," Goldsman once said of the script — ultimately too dark for the studio to put into production. But Petersen did have a reliable track record at the Academy Awards, scoring a Best Director nod for Das Boot and later overseeing action hits like Air Force One and The Perfect Storm, which frequently factored into such below the line races as Best Sound and Best Visual Effects. His Batman vs. Superman might have mustered some Oscar attention in those categories... as opposed to the (golden) raspberries that greeted the 2016 take.

2. Superman Lives (1997-98)

Out of the ashes of another, non-Salkind stab at a Superman: Reborn script rose Kevin Smith's legendary near-miss with the hero. The Clerks auteur and noted comic book aficionado put his own spin on the death and resurrection of Superman, crafting a mammoth script that incorporated such villains as Lex Luthor, Braniac, Doomsday, and — at the behest of producer Jon Peters — a giant spider. Peters brought his Batman director Tim Burton aboard and the filmmaker picked noted Superman stan Nicolas Cage as his ideal Kal-El. Rewrites were made, costumes tests were filmed and parts of sets were constructed before Warner Bros. ultimately canceled the movie amid their uncertainty about Burton's vision and the movie's cost.

Decades later, Cage's Superman would finally get to fight that giant spider in 2023's The Flash, although the actor complained that his cameo was rewritten by "inhumane" A.I. Meanwhile, test footage and concept art from Burton's abandoned film is plentiful online and point to a version of Superman that would have been as visually striking as the director's two Batman productions — both of which scored Oscar recognition. (Batman won for production design, while Batman Returns was nominated makeup and visual effects.) If nothing else Jose Fernandez's sculpted super-suit would have been a shoo-in for a costume nod.

1. Justice League: Mortal (2007-09)

After George Miller's motion capture-enhanced animated musical Happy Feet danced away with the Best Animated Feature Oscar in 2006, the Mad Max maestro turned his attention to bringing that tech into the DC Universe. The film would have brought together all of the DC super-friends — Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, the Flash, and Martian Manhunter — as they take on the forces of billionaire bad guy Maxwell Lord, played by Jay Baruchel. Miller had cast D.J. Cotrona as his Superman and the actor had an intensive two months training session in Australia as shooting neared. "The Superman suit we were going to use is still my favorite that I’ve ever seen," Baruchel once raved. "From afar it looked normal, but if you got real close you saw that all of the blue [parts] were covered in super-small Kryptonian writing. It was just gorgeous."

Unfortunately, the rest of us never got to see it. The 2008 writers' strike postponed production and the smash success of Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight made the studio rethink how they wanted to use Batman going forward. But Miller's demonstrated facility with mo-cap would almost certainly have made the film a leading candidate for a visual effects Oscar. And, in fact, had it stuck to its 2009 release date, it would have faced off against James Cameron's Avatar in that category. The Big Blue Boy Scout vs. big blue aliens from Pandora? That's a battle Superman may just have won.