Salkind on Superman — Past and Future

Ilya Salkind was perhaps an unexpected face to spot at the launch party for the "Superman Returns" DVD and videogame. But the man who produced "Superman: The Movie" with his father, the late Alexander Salkind, was more than happy to talk about his past — and future — with the Man of Steel.

Most interesting is Salkind’s plans to make a film about the lives of Superman's creators, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster from a script by Rick Palacioz and Shuster’s nephew, Warren Shuster Peary.

The film will start with the duo’s early and unsuccessful attempts as teenagers in the 1930s to sell Superman as a comic strip or comicbook, up until the first Superman movie, when DC Comics and its parent company Warner Bros. gave them full credit for their work and financial support after decades of struggle and poverty.

The film will contrast Siegel and Shuster’s real life with the fantasies they created in their minds. “It will be real, with dreams that use some really cool visual effects,” he says.

Salkind says the original deal for the film was made with National Periodicals Publications, which officially changed its name to DC Comics when it was bought by Warner Bros. National bought the rights to Superman from Siegel and Shuster when it agreed to publish the character in 1938’s Action Comics #1. After World War II, Siegel and Shuster lost a lawsuit to recover the rights to the character.

Both men struggled for decades, becoming so bitter about their treatment that they famously wrote letters to newspapers putting a curse on “Superman: The Movie" when production began in the 1970s. That publicity played a key role in convincing DC and Time Warner to restore their credit and support both men financially until their deaths in the 1990s.

Salkind says the final scene in the film will feature a producer character very much like himself welcoming Siegel and Shuster to Washington, D.C., for the premiere of the movie in 1978.

Turning to “Superman Returns,” Salkind praised the performance of Brandon Routh for the way it evokes Christopher Reeve. “I think Brandon was channeling Chris,” Salkind says. “Chris was Superman. Brandon got that, and by taking that approach made it work.”

Much has been made of the replacement of Richard Donner with Richard Lester as director of “Superman II,” with Donner’s account getting a lot of attention with the DVD release of his cut of the film. Salkind says he is pleased to be able to tell some of his side of the story in commentary tracks recorded for the new DVDs of the first three Superman films.

One such dispute was the discussions of camp. At the DVD launch of Donner’s cut two weeks ago, Donner criticized the producers’ approach as campy, citing scenes in early drafts of the script in which Superman gives a lollipop to a bald man on the street who turns out to be Telly Savales.

Salkind says in response that everyone knew that scene was on the way out. He also says Donner’s version was not camp free, pointing to Ned Beatty’s Otis character. Salkind says the plan was always to make the film a realistic fantasy. “It was always going to be larger than life,” he says. “You don’t hire Brando to do camp.”

Salkind says he and Donner are on friendly terms and talked on the phone for 40 minutes a few weeks back. He remains happy with the released version of "Superman II" and praised Lester’s take on the character, which he still believes to be the correct one. “Lester taught me you laugh with them, not at them.”

Salkind recently produced “Young Alexander the Great,” about the leader’s youth. He says the film’s star, Sam Heughan, auditioned for the Superman role in Singer’s version and has many of the same qualities Reeve had. There is a trailer on Salkind's site.