Actor Brandon Routh ultimately played the part of Superman in Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns, a reboot for the character that unfortunately didn’t quite land with audiences.
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While the issue really wasn’t with Routh, it turns out that the director really wanted actor Jude Law to play the part, at least initially. During a visit to The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, the actor filled Colbert in on why he chose not to play the coveted role.
“This was a while ago, so you remember they were rebooting Superman, not this last time with Henry Cavill, they did it once before, um, (in 2004), yeah, when I was obviously young enough to play Superman.”
He continued: “So I was approached and at the time I don’t know, I just, it didn’t float my boat you know, like I just really didn’t want to go there, um. First of all, I’m an Englishman and I felt like, I don’t know, it just didn’t seem to fit, and I was always worried about the outfit and I just didn’t fancy it. This director was very keen to meet and impress it upon me and I was actually out in California and he said “Look, you just have to try the suit on. The suit’s amazing, and we’ve revamped the suit”, and I was like okay, send the suit over. Send the suit over.”
“So there’s a knock on my hotel room, there’s a guard, a big guard, right, and this lady from the wardrobe and they bring the suit in, and I’m like “I’m not going to try the suit on in front of you”, I was like I’m going to go in the bathroom, right. So I take the suit into the bathroom and I’m putting it on and then I look round, I’m in the mirror and suddenly…I’m Superman, right. I though this, and the music kinda comes in like da, da, dada duh duh, right, I stood there and then I had this picture of that, me in that costume on posters all over the world and I was like “No Way” and I unzipped it. But I was Superman for two minutes, that’s enough.”
A Jude Law Superman would’ve certainly been interesting, I’ll give it that.
