Keanu Tapped for Superman's New 'Excellent Adventure'?

[Phantasm66]

Woah! Kryptonite, dude!

Keanu Tapped for Superman's New 'Excellent Adventure'?
Friday, September 13, 2002
By Roger Friedman

It's on, it's off, and on again. Superman is back in the planning stages at Warner Bros.

My sources tell me that Keanu Reeves, star of Warner Bros.'s very successful The Matrix has been tapped by director Brett Ratner, to play the Man of Steel in Superman: Last Son of Krypton. Jeffrey Abrams, who wrote the feature Regarding Henry and invented TV's "Felicity" series, wrote the final, accepted script.

Ratner, director of the forthcoming Red Dragon, the Rush Hour movies, and the very interesting Family Man, is just about to sign to direct Last Son, finally ending Warner's tango with director McG, who is busy readying Charlie's Angels 2. Ratner had been rumored in Variety last month as a possible Superman director among many. But I'm told the deal is done and he is in.

Weirdly enough, Keanu's name is similar to that of the original beloved TV Superman, George Reeves.

Keanu's first big hit of course was Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. Imagine if those characters had had X-ray vision!

Superman of late has had a hard time getting back to the screen. At one point Nicolas Cage was set to play him. Kevin Smith, of Chasing Amy and Dogma fame, wrote a script but that was abandoned. Then a Superman vs. Batman movie seemed like it was taking shape, with Jude Law and Colin Farrell rumored to be set for the respective parts. Law dropped out, and the new rumor was that Josh Hartnett was replacing him. But a wildly high budget made that project prohibitively expensive and it was scrapped. Interestingly, Superman vs. Batman was supposed to be directed by another Warner's favorite, Wolfgang Petersen.

But Petersen (are you still with me?)-director of The Perfect Storm, Das Boot and Air Force One, abandoned Superman vs. Batman for the historical epic Troy. This is the film that Brad Pitt also recently jumped to, leaving Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain feature high and dry in Australia just as they were ready to go into principal production.

Before the S v.B-Troy shuffle, Petersen had a staunch fan and supporter in then-Warner's chief of production, Lorenzo di Bonaventura, who proudly announced the Petersen project and touted it to the trades. But last week, di Bonaventura was ousted from his position at the studio. Is there a connection? Was Petersen Kryptonite to Lorenzo? Indeed, he-and the Superman vs. Batman epic were what did him in. Alan Horn, now running Warner's on his own, championed the Abrams/Ratner simpler Superman idea.

Ironically, news of this new Superman film is coming to light just as the original movie Superman, Christopher Reeve (yeah, I know, this name is really weird) has announced that he's making progress in his effort to walk again. Wouldn't it be great if Ratner's new screenplay includes some kind of part for Reeve? That would give this project, which has been jinxed so far, the imprimatur it needs.

source: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,62992,00.html