Nicolas Cage Says “There’s Still a Chance” He Can Appear as Superman in New DC Movie

The world of DC Comics has inspired a wide array of film and television adaptations over the years — including a number that didn’t quite come to fruition. Among them was Superman Lives, a live-action film adaptation that would have been directed by Tim Burton, and would have starred Nicolas Cage as the man of steel. The film ultimately got cancelled in the pre-production stage, but images still surfaced of Cage wearing the character’s iconic costume, sparking a documentary film and years of lamentations about what could have been.

While Cage has voiced Superman in the animated film Teen Titans Go! To the Movies, some fans have still wanted to see Cage play the part in a live-action context — and according to the actor, it might not be impossible. In a recent interview with GQ, Cage responded to a Reddit post from a fan asking why Superman Lives can’t still be made today. As the actor put it, there “might still be a chance” that he could step into the role.

“Would it matter how much time I appeared as the character?” Cage suggested. “There might still be a chance.”

This notion will certainly surprise fans of the actor and of the character, particularly with the upcoming The Flash movie on the horizon. The film has been confirmed to be taking a trip throughout the live-action DC multiverse, with Michael Keaton’s Batman and his subsequent continuity expected to return in the film. It certainly doesn’t seem out of the question that some sort of visit to the world of Superman Lives could be part of that, potentially with Cage directly reprising his role.

“I can’t tell you a lot about the future of this, the future of the Multiverse in DC, but I can tell you I’m very excited about it as a filmmaker cracking this acorn and opening the window to new adventures in the Multiverse is super exciting,” The Flash director Andy Muschietti said during a convention appearance last year. “The Multiverse has been a thing in the comic book world for decades, and decades, and decades, and I think it’s a good time to take it into [the movies]. It’s also very special that our Multiverse is not just a Multiverse of characters, it’s a Multiverse of films. It’s a cinematic Multiverse as you might already know by looking at the names that are showing up like Michael Keaton reprising his role as Batman, it’s very exciting and one of the reasons that I got closer and closer to this project.”

Previous attempts were made to try to bring Cage’s Superman to fruition through the DC multiverse, particularly with The CW’s Crisis on Infinite Earths crosssover in 2019 and 2020.

“We did reach out to Nic Cage,” producer and co-writer 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.”

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