Here’s something that would have been awesome: a decade ago, Brett Radner and J.J. Abrams cast Matt Bomer in their Superman movie.
In 2002, a Superman movie was in development. That’s not surprising, of course: this is Hollywood, a Superman movie (or three) is always in development.
For crying out loud, Nicolas Cage was set to play Superman once!
Related: New Batman v Superman stills reveal Bruce Wayne, Lex Luthor, and hero worship
This project was particularly interesting though, and deserves a moment of our attention.
Written by J.J. Abrams (this was back when he had just created Alias), the movie would have been directed by Brett Radner, and focused on Clark Kent’s younger years.
Set when Clark was in college, Radner’s Superman would have been much more light-hearted than the eventual Man of Steel. In fact, perhaps the tone of CBS’ Supergirl wouldn’t have been far off what Radner and Abrams were imagining.
Related: Supergirl’s Melissa Benoist: “I want to do right by women”
Several high-profile actors were in consideration for the role, including Josh Hartnett, Jude Law and Paul Walker. But ultimately, the red cape went to Magic Mike XXL‘s Matt Bomer.
Bomer revealed as much in a new interview, on Josh Horowitz’s HappySadConfused podcast. Anecdotally, Bomer screen-tested with Amy Adams, who of course ended up playing Lois Lane in Zack Snyder’s version.
Unfortunately, Bomer’s Superman would never make it to the big screen.
“It was a month of ‘Okay, looks like this is going to happen,’ and then it slowly fell apart,” Bomer recalled. “But it’s okay. I have zero regrets about that.”
Matt Bomer of course went on to star in Chuck, White Collar and American Horror Story (among other things).
And he did end up playing Superman, sort of, voicing the character in the 2013 video game Superman: Unbound. Some things are just meant to be.
While we appreciate Henry Cavill, and DC’s current Superman trajectory, there’s a lot about the Brett Radner version that we would have liked to see. Superman’s evil twin, for example, and Lex Luthor the extra-terrestrial-obsessed CIA agent (Mulder, much?).
Oh well. Maybe for the next reboot.