Looks like the Donner cut of Superman II may have jumped through its legal hurdles!!!

i need more sources before i jump through any hoops.

but thanks for the heads up anyway.

on the contrary, i would say if this actually did pan out as it is allegedly planned, i would expect that to push back farther any attempt to re-use the same footage in a recut of the earlier film.

there would just be no incentive for the studio "now see the lost footage for a second time in another film!"
or for the creative personel involved (Donner in this case) to want to invite comparisons to Singers new work after giving him his blessing on the project.

I have mixed feelings about this. Perhaps it is true, but then again, if they were to replace Christopher Reeve in those scenes, it would just be wrong.

But then again... I'll bet that on the DVD they would probably have the original scene with Reeve intact.

Hell, Warner Bros., just bring it on.

Wouldn't the old scenes clash with the new movie? I rather they recreate scenes than use old footage. Its not like a two year old footage, its a twenty-two year old footage.

I would guess if this went down it would involve only using Brando. I'm sure they'd just take only his image and dialogue from those unused scenes and insert them digitally into whatever new footage is shot at the Fortress of Solitude set or whatever.

Now I don't think this means a Donner cut is forthcoming either. It wouldnt make much sense with Singer's new movie using the backstory of the first two movies.

Supposedly that Brando stuff is very specific to the plot of Superman 2, about giving up the powers etc.. If they're using it, I think it would have to be in flashback, directly connecting the new movie to the old. If they bothered to clear through the red tape of that footage it seems like they'd want to get as much mileage out of it as possible. So, maybe this is good news for S2 dvd?

Yay! Maybe Warner will realize they can make cash on a director's cut reissue of Superman 2 on DVD timed with the new film's release!

Capitalism working? Customers getting what they want? Maybe so!

this new superman sounds more like a trainwreck every week to me

I'm excited that one day we could finally see this footage. I cannot however get too excited about the new movie.... and I am a huge Supes fan.

Man, I got all excited from the thread title, and then I read that post...



Can somebody replace the three exclamation points with "I guess"?

Anyway, there never were legal hurdles with using the Brando footage. The hurdle was, Brando wanted a lot of money for them to put him in 'Superman II', they didn't want to pay (the Salskinds are notoriously cheap), so they re-shot the stuff with Superman's mom. When they wanted to do the DVD, they still didn't want to pay him.

I'm guessing that Brando's estate is being a little more forgiving than Brando himself was, but, either way, I don't think this says much about the 'Superman II' re-cut. Apart from everything else, let's not forget that Donner himself has repeatedly said that he wasn't given the chance to shoot much of what would be neccessary to put together what his cut would have been. The legal hurdles are not much, if any, of the hold-up. Donner doesn't want to do it. That's the hurdle. Not having shot all the footage he'd need, that's another hurdle.


They'd have to make up a new term, 'Superman 2' already has a director, and it wasn't Richard Donner.

Uh, I think that would qualify as a legal hurdle. Use the footage without paying, and you get big, fat lawsuit on your hands. Hence the 'legality' issue.

True, but as mentioned it's not the only hurdle that they would have to negotiate. As was stated earlier, Donner was pulled off of the project before filming all of his footage. Lester had new pages written to fill the gaps and shot other scenes differently. Gene Hackman didn't return either forcing the use of a stand-in and that horrible voice-over. The accomplishment of a new Donner cut exactly as he planned it would require some type of reshoots, but that is quite impossile since everyone involved has aged considerably or passed on. The best we could hope for is an assemblage of available footage by Donner as opposed to his true version.

I also don't see this development as hope towards Donner doing a new cut of Superman II, but rather another hurdle. I think that if Donner did indeed have plans to do a recut version, he wouldn't have given Singer his blessing to go after the Brando footage.

Call me a pessimist, but this sounds more like a death knell than hope.

We could split hairs on this all day; if you want to take that as a legal hurdle, fine, but it wasn't a legal hurdle which was holding up the full release, it was a very specific hurdle -- I'd say a financial one, because I thought it was that they didn't want to pay the huge amount he wanted, not that they considered using it without paying him a la 'Back to the Future II', but I wouldn't argue the point -- holding up a very specific piece of the full release, but one which NEVER would've been put in even if Donner had come back and directed all of 'Superman II'.

Even if Donner had done it, the Salkinds wouldn't have wanted to pay Brando.

Legal hurdles almost always go away when you pay the unhappy party. So that's a distinction without a difference.

And "train wreck" sounds just about right for this messed-up production.

I think you can do one better:

Let Donner go in and restore all of his scenes, then go into Lester's material and recut that footage to the best of his ability in order to fill any gaps. Basically, give Donner the same power over Lester's footage that Lester had over Donner's footage back in 1981. Seems only fair.

No, it won't be a true "Director's Cut" (more like an "Uncredited Co-Director's Recut") but it will be a fascinating and worthwhile alternate version. And, I'm betting, a better film.

Charlie,

Being as you are who you are, are you hinting or hoping?

Only hoping, I'm afraid.

Superman II was released in the US in 1981, but it was completed and released in parts of Europe in 1980. You can read about it here.

Damn. The thread title got me excited for nothing.

In the case of Brando footage being used in the new movie... I'll believe it when I hear it directly from Singer.

In the case of a Donner re-cut... I'll believe it when it's in my hands. (I'll still hope for it, of course.)

Yeah, I know. That's what I get for rolling out of bed and posting before being fully awake. Nice to see the spirit of "Neil S. Bulk" still alive here at HTF though.

I hope Warners can make this happen. I was (and still am) a huge fan of "Superman The Movie" but even as a kid, "Superman II" left me with mixed feelings. It wasn't until 1984 when I got to visit the set of "The Goonies" and was filled in on the troubled "Superman II" production history that I realized the full extent of how severely Donner (and his work on "Superman II") got shafted.

Yes but isn't the bigger hurdle that Donner has stated (as was posted here at HTF some time ago) that he has no desire to insult Lester by doing such a thing?
I know I read that quote from Donner somewhere around here.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if this turned out to be true.

The BBC's Imagine programme showed an extended version of Iain Johnstone's interview with Brando from the Making of Superman documentary, late last year. The ownership of that footage (along with all the extra material from Superman The Movie and Superman II) was part of the legal battle between Warner Brothers and Pueblo Film Licensing. So it seems very likely that there's been some movement on the legal front.

However, I'm not too sure about the idea itself. If this footage is being shown as a flashback to events that happened in Superman II (even if Reeve is replaced by Routh in these scenes), then surely for it to make sense, the original scenes would have to be reinserted into Superman II, since they contradict scenes in the released version of the film?

If it's not linked to Superman II, then I'd prefer it if they got someone else to play Jor-El.

As for the Donner re-cut, as I mentioned in one of the other threads, after the release of the first film, Donner suspected that the Salkinds were going to release Superman II with just the footage he had already shot. So some kind of re-cut just using that footage would certainly be possible.

As it is, there are really only a few important scenes missing from Donner's version. The NASA Control Room scenes, the Texas Rangers scene, and some Metropolis action footage featuring Non smashing up police vehicles, etc. Fifteen minutes of screen time at the most, I'd say. The rest is just blue screen footage that needs to be composited, and some model effects footage.

If the will was there, I think they could easily complete these scenes, even today.

I would like to see an extended alternate uncut of Superman 2. I'm all for it. Bring it on.

As someone who only knows the end result (Donner got Supes II ripped out form under him and another director finished the job), can someone who knows more then I fill in the story of what happened here?

If that is the case, perhaps Lester would extend Donner that same respect and give his blessing for a re-cut.

That doesn't give Donner the same power Lester had. Lester had one key advantage: the ability to shoot new footage. Donner would be forced to use certain things whether he wanted to or not, I don't think he'd think that was very fair.



Donner was *afraid* that they would do that, that doesn't mean he'd want to go back, after that didn't happen, and do it on his own. If he had thought it was possible to cut his version together out of what was shot, why would he have even needed to come back and do any more work on it at the point when they fired him?

Also, I think that the main reason Donner thought they'd do that was that he had initially been contracted to shoot them both together at the same time (so that the second could be released within a year after the first). At a certain point during the joint production of the two movies, Donner realized that it would be impossible for him to get the first one done in time if he had to worry about shooting the second as well, so he pushed back all shooting for the second that required additional sets, etc. Anything that was shot in the same place as parts of #1 (Fortress stuff, Daily Planet stuff, etc) he did, but he didn't shoot the other stuff. The highest estimate I've ever seen was that he shot 75% of what he wanted, and I think he himself cites a lower number than that.

Plus, a lot of stuff he had intended for 'Superman II' wound up in 'Superman I' *anyway*, and he was never given the chance to re-imagine 'Superman II' fully at the time.

Look, I'd love to see it, but I can't see what Donner would have to gain by doing it; it seems like the best he could do would be release a weird amalgam which resembles what he wanted, but still resembles the Lester version in just as many ways, and I can't see why he'd take the time to do that. Without him, they can't do the Donner cut, because there's nothing from the time to refer to (it's not like 'Alien 3', where workprints and such were still around showing what Fincher had wanted).



A lot, and none of it is on the record. There are a few websites devoted to it. Here's one I just found:
http://superman.rossiters.com/s2_main.html

There's a better one out there, I'll try to find it, but the last time I looked, it had been shut down.

UPDATE: I found it, and it's gone now. Shame, that site had it explained very well. A lot of the ones that are left only have half-information, like a quote from Margot Kidder about how Donner's cut exists in a vault somewhere (something Donner himself has denied).

I never said he would want to. I said it would be possible to re-cut the film just using Donner's footage.



Because it wouldn't have been his version, but a version. Obviously, he hadn't shot all the footage in the script, but knowing the Salkinds, he thought they'd take the cheap option and assemble what footage they had into a "finished" version of the film. As I'm sure you're aware, Donner was actually planning to add further scenes to the film.



Donner interviewed for Fantastic Films magazine just prior to the release of Superman The Movie in 1978:





But what if Donner was able to shoot new footage for it?