Videos by ComicBook.com
A number of Superman projects have failed to get off the ground, including Superman: Flyby, which had J.J. Abrams on board as a producer and X-Men: The Last Stand helmer Brett Ratner in the director’s chair. The creative team met with many actors for the lead role, but only a few really stood out. The Mummy star Brendan Fraser was among the frontrunners, and he even made it far enough into the process to put on the suit.
During a recent appearance on the Happy Sad Confused podcast (via ComicBookMovie), Fraser reminisced about his first time in the superhero machine.
“Oh, I loved that screenplay. They let me read it. They locked me in an empty office in, I don’t know, some studio lot. [I] signed an NDA. It was printed black, on crimson paper, so you couldn’t photocopy it or sneak it out the door inscospicuously,” he said. “I mean, it was Shakespeare in space. It was a really good screenplay. It really was. But, yes, I was considered. I did do a screen test. I did wear the big guy’s suit.”
The script may have caught Fraser’s attention. Still, he realized pretty quickly that he was better off taking his career in another direction, understanding the kind of pressure that came with playing a major comic book character.
“I don’t know if I was ready to take that on then,” he explained. “I mean, I felt I was, because, you know, big opportunity and excitement, et cetera, et cetera. But, I don’t know. Like [Terry George] once said, ‘If it’s not for you, then it’ll pass you by’ […] and it wasn’t for me.”
Nearly two decades later, Fraser found a role in the genre he thought he was ready to tackle. Unfortunately, it ended up with a fate worse than Flyby, with the powers that be ensuring that it never saw the light of day.
