This came as a BIG shock to me... You'll have to wait for it though.
By now, everyone on these boards should know I am the worlds only "Superman IV: The Quest For Peace" fan. Hopefully, you also know that I am a J.J. Abrams (Alias, Lost, M:I III, JoyRide) fan.
I completely missed the hype back in 2003 when J.J. Abrams script for a Superman movie was big news. Heck, I didn't know who is was until 2005. But some of you might remember the stink that Ain't It Cool News made when they posted an early review of his script.
http://www.aintitcoolnews.com/display.cgi?id=13350
This negative internet buzz help kill the project... not mentioning inflated egos, incompetent producers, rising budgets, and insane directors...
I missed all this until I picked up this week's Entertainment Weekly which ran a story about the Supermans that might have been. I saw that Abrams wrote a draft and I became obsessed with finding it. The man's a genius in my film making-wannabe eyes.
An hour on the internet turned up nothing. What I did have was the review by Ain't It Cool News. I don't really like the personalities on that site, so I try to avoid their material as much as possible. But what was this disaster that my idol had written? I started to read their review.
After BSing for several paragraphs the reviewer begins that Krypton didn't explode, instead the script begins with a frizzled reporter...
"Wait a minute..." I say to myself... That sounds familiar. I read the review a bit longer and all of it sounded like something I had read before...
I rushed to the bookshelf and pulled out a binder labeled: Mystery Superman script. I flip it open and on the first page was the description of a frizzled reporter... ninja cloaks... and "force of a thousand hurricanes"... For some odd reason, I've owned the J.J. Abrams script for about a year.
WHAT A TWIST!
The history of the Abrams script:
I tried to order the script for "Superman IV" from a script vendor along with two other scripts. I will never do business with them again, because they managed to screw up two orders. I had ordered the script to "Masters of the Universe; The Motion Picture" which arrived fine. It was an early draft and a delightful read.
The other script was supposed to be "Chronicles of Riddick", instead I got the David Hayter (Solid Snake) draft of "Pitch Black 2"... okay, that's cool. I love Solid Snake...
But then there's "Superman IV". The cover is a picture of the movie poster and then script. No credit page to the authors like the previous two scripts had. It was clear it was NOT the script to "Superman IV" but some phantom script. Because there was no credit page, I had no idea who wrote it.
Only now do I know that is was written by the genius J.J. Abrams.
OOOOOooooooooooo, SWEET IRONY!!!!