Warner Scraps 8 hour Superman Trilogy

According to posts on Mark Millar's official website, Warner Bros. has at least for now nixed [...]

According to posts on Mark Millar's official website, Warner Bros. has at least for now nixed plans for a trilogy of films featuring the Man of Steel. Warner Bros. had been promising for years that another Superman movie was in the works, and it looked like that promise was going to come true late last year.

In a 2008 interview with Empireonline.com, Millar revealed that he had just pitched the idea for an 8-hour "Magnum Opus" of Superman stories. The stories would be broken up into 3 movies that would be released a year after each other, much like how the Lord of the Rings films were. Millar went on later to say that a big name director had agreed to the films.

When Millar posted that the project had be scrapped, the writer claimed that the reason Warner Bros. said no was that the studios were being cautious at the time towards any live action Superman film. However, Warner Bros. and DC Comics apparently are not afraid of releasing an animated version of Superman, as they announced earlier this month that a new Batman/ Superman film was to be released later this fall under the DC Universe line.

Warner has yet to release a statement in regards to Millar's announcement. Some websites are speculating that Superman Returns' poor showing in 2006 and Watchmen's recent troubles in the box office are the motives behind the studio's decision. I believe that there is a simpler reason for Millar's project being shot down. The CW's Smallville was just recently picked up for another season, meaning that the show wouldn't end until at least May 2010. So, if Warner has any plans for Tom Welling donning the red tights onscreen, they're not going to want to commit to a multi-year project that could delay that from happening. If this is why Warner wants to be "cautious," I can wait for safety reasons.

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