Crisis On Infinite Earths Showrunner Reached Out To Nic Cage To Play Superman

A couple of months ago, a fan joked about Arrowverse producer Marc Guggenheim reaching out to Academy Award winner Nicolas Cage to play a version of Superman in the "Crisis on Infinite Earths" crossover. Guggenheim surprised everyone by suggesting -- jokingly? -- that they might have actually done so. Cage, who voiced Spider-Man Noir and appeared in Kick-Ass, is a known comic book fan and was cast in a planned Superman movie from Tim Burton in the '90s. The film never came to pass, but it got far enough along that there are photos of Cage in the costume.

Well, somebody finally thought to ask Guggenheim whether he was joking or not, and it turns out: nope. Besides Tyler Hoechlin, Tom Welling, and Brandon Routh, all reprising the role as Superman from different realities throughout the DC multiverse, Cage was apparently approached for a cameo in the crossover.

"We did reach out to Nic Cage," Guggenheim revealed during an interview with Indiewire. "We reached out to a lot of people, and there were people who didn't want to do it. There were people who would only do it for amounts of money that we could not ever afford. And there were other people who really wanted to do it, but couldn't for scheduling. That was the case with a lot of, I have to say, the movie stars that we reached out to. The thing about movie stars is, they're all shooting movies. And unless those movies are shooting in Vancouver, we're kind of out of luck. But I have to say that the sheer number of actors that we did end up getting exceeded my expectation."

Did he say no? Was it a scheduling thing? Probably yes to both but, for now, there's no actual evidence to that effect. For all we know, he could appear on your screens this weekend.

The event will bring together the heroes from multiple Earths to battle against the Anti-Monitor (LaMonica Garrett), a godlike villain who threatens to destroy all reality. In the comics, the story ended with the deaths of The Flash and Supergirl, and the destruction of DC's multiverse, leading to a single Earth with a complex history packed with hundreds of heroes.

The event will be the most ambitious thing DC has ever attempted in live action, bringing together characters from all six of the current DC Comics adaptations on The CW (Arrow, The Flash, Supergirl, DC's Legends of Tomorrow, Batwoman, and Black Lightning), along with characters and actors from the 1990 version of The Flash, the short-lived Birds of Prey, Smallville, Superman Returns, and the iconic 1966 Batman series.

"Crisis on Infinite Earths" kicks off on Sunday, December 8 on Supergirl, runs through a Monday episode of Batwoman and that Tuesday's episode of The Flash. That will be the midseason cliffhanger, as the shows go on hiatus for the holidays and return on January 14 to finish out the event with the midseason premiere of Arrow and a "special episode" of DC's Legends of Tomorrow, which launches as a midseason series this year and so will not have an episode on the air before the Crisis. Black Lightning's midseason finale will have a "Crisis" tie-in as well, although unofficially.