Take a look at the Nic Cage ‘Superman’ movie that Tim Burton and Kevin Smith almost made

In the late ’90s, Kevin Smith, Tim Burton, and Nicolas Cage teamed up to make what easily would have become either the most amazing or the most terrible Superman film ever made. Unfortunately, neither happened. After a long production period, the movie ultimately was put on hold and never made, much to the disappointment and / or relief of fans.

That hasn’t stopped fans from being inexhaustibly curious about the project though: Kevin Smith’s script would have had Superman in a black outfit that could regenerate, fighting an evil spider-creature, and generally feeling more alien than earthly. Concept art shows that Burton’s traditionally creepy sets would have been on show with him as director, and photographs reveal just how glorious that Superman outfit would have looked with Cage in it.

The film would have been called Superman Lives, and now a crowdfunded documentary is digging through its death. The documentary, titled The Death of Superman Lives: What Happened?, isn’t actually finished yet, but it’s just released its first trailer, which includes footage from interviews with Smith and Burton (who isn’t all that excited to talk about it: “Anybody got any cyanide or anything I can take?” he asks). The documentary raised just over $115,000 on Kickstarter last year, and now it’s running a second crowdfunding campaign for an additional $85,000 to actually complete the film since it ran over budget. That means there’s no release date yet, but evidently much of the work is already complete.