Ben Affleck is known for playing Batman, but his pal and fellow filmmaker Kevin Smith saw him more as the Man of Steel type. Yes, before Affleck portrayed Daredevil and the Dark Knight on the big screen, Smith saw him as the perfect contender to be Superman.
Famously, Smith wrote a draft of the never-made Superman Lives, which would have been directed by Tim Burton and starred Nicolas Cage as the Last Son of Krypton. In an interview with Wizard in 1999, Smith revealed that he never saw Cage in the part. That decision wasn’t his at all.
“No, I did not see Nic Cage as Superman,” Smith said. “While writing a little picture for the Brothers Warner called Superman Lives, I actually did throw Cage’s name into the mix, but as Brainiac, not the Man of Steel. Producer Jon Peters, the guy in charge of this uber-franchise (and the one who’d frequently ask me, ‘Who’s Kal-El?’), thought Cage would make the perfect Kryptonian, because he could play up the alien aspect.”
Fortunately, Smith wasn’t shy to tell Wizard whom he had in mind while penning the story and saying his lines. In the lead was his friend Affleck, who appeared in several of Smith’s films, such as Mallrats, Chasing Amy, and Dogma. “I’ve worked with this cat a few times, and the man can do it all: pathos, comedy, drama,” Smith said. “He plays an angel in my latest film, Dogma – and what’s Superman, if not the corporeal representation of a guardian angel?”
Rounding out Smith’s main cast would have been Linda Fiorentino as Lois Lane, Jason Lee as Brainiac, Jack Nicholson as Lex Luthor, and Jason Mewes as Jimmy Olsen. Other cast members would have been Famke Janssen as Mercy Graves, David Hyde Pierce as the Eradicator, John Mahoney as Perry White, Joey Lauren Adams as Cat Grant, Walter Flanagan as Doomsday, Michael Keaton as Batman, and Meryl Streep and Renée Zellweger as the two polar bears that Peters wanted in the movie.
Yeah, it’s quite the ’90s cast and the embodiment of the era. However, this was the story that Smith wrote, so he’s entitled to envision whomever he wanted in the roles – whether they would have ever happened or not.
In Affleck’s case, he did end up playing Superman in a roundabout way. In 2006, he portrayed George Reeves in Hollywoodland. Reeves was the actor who brought the Man of Steel to life on TV in the 1950s. In the film, Affleck actually suits up as Superman, so it must have been quite the sight for Smith to see his friend in the famous red and blue after he had fancast him in the part years earlier.
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A decade later, Affleck secured the role of Batman and went toe-to-toe with Henry Cavill’s Big Blue in Zack Snyder’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. All things considered, Affleck has had quite the career, playing all these superheroes.
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