“He would have most likely killed them both”: Henry Cavill Nearly Became Superman in Scrapped, Controversial Film Before Joining Zack Snyder’s $668M Man of Steel

 Henry Cavill was slated to play Superman long before he bagged the role in 2013’s Man of Steel. 

Back in the early 2000s, the Dawn of Justice star was set to star as Clark Kent in a now-shelved film titled Superman: Flyby, a controversial project which was written by popular filmmaker and composer J.J. Abrams before it got canceled. The movie’s script faced immense backlash, besides an inflated budget and hindrances in production, all of which culminated in Flyby‘s demise.

However, as the saying goes, everything happens for a reason. So, while one opportunity got snatched away from Cavill, another one worth $668 million presented itself right in front of him, albeit, years later the Superman: Flyby fiasco.

Before Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel made a fortune at the box office and became a global hit, Henry Cavill was fully prepared to appear as Superman in Superman: Flyby. According to reports, Cavill, 39, was not only selected to portray Clark Kent on the big screen in the movie but he’d even shot a handful of scenes for the same. What’s more, the film was apparently also supposed to star MCU star Robert Downey Jr. opposite Cavill as the renowned supervillain, Lex Luthor. But the movie died down before it ever even truly began.

The major reason why Flyby met the horrid fate of being mothballed was due to its problematic script which AICN rebuked so brutally in 2002 that Abrams was left with no other choice but to kill the project. “You’ll believe a franchise can suck!”, that’s how harsh AICN’s reviews had been.

Coming to the writing part of the film, Abrams had taken certain controversial liberties concerning the superhero’s mythology wherein he refurbished quite a lot of content to present an entirely different take on Superman. And while that might’ve been a contentious decision on his part, it certainly was intriguing at best.