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Nicolas Cage: Not feeling 'Super'
Friday, June 09, 2000 By Ron Weiskind, Post-Gazette Movie Editor
If it isn't dead already, a hunk of verbal kryptonite from Nicolas Cage may put the final kibosh on the "Superman" movie project that would have turned Pittsburgh into the Man of Steel's hometown of Metropolis.
"I've decided that I'm not going to do it," Cage says in an interview clip on the Mr. Showbiz Web site (www.mrshowbiz.go.com) promoting his new movie, "Gone in 60 Seconds."
"It's just been too long. At first it seemed like a good idea. It would have been a lot of fun. But it's just that too much time has passed, and I'm willing to part company with it."
Cage once had been enthusiastic about playing the Man of Steel. The original director on the movie, Tim Burton, was excited about shooting it in Pittsburgh. He wanted to use PPG Place as the headquarters of Superman's nemesis, villain Lex Luthor.
Production was slated to begin in the summer of 1998. But script and budget problems intervened. The shoot was postponed indefinitely in April of that year. Movie insiders said at the end of that year that Burton was off the project. That probably killed Pittsburgh's participation. The names of prospective screenwriters and directors kept cropping up through 1999. As recently as four months ago, reports surfaced of a new script that had pleased both Cage and the studio, Warner Bros., that hoped to produce the movie.
Through it all, Cage was the one constant -- although some critics of the project thought he was the problem. Some reports said the project died when Cage tried on the Superman uniform in a costume test two years ago and supposedly looked less than heroic.
The studio's parent company, Time Warner, reaps enough profit from its ownership of the Superman comic book and the popular TV cartoon series that another Superman movie may be inevitable. Maybe just not this one.
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