This year’s Sundance film festival featured the documentary Super/Man, which chronicles the late Christopher Reeve, who played the DC character from 1978-1987. With how beloved the actor’s take on Superman was for a certain generation, it’s no surprise that studios are trying to snatch it up, and it may have found a home.
Per Deadline, Warner Bros. Discovery is the potential frontrunner for the documentary, and is looking to grab it for $US15 million. Sources told the outlet WBD’s understandably put it on Max with Reeve’s Superman movies on Max, where the synergy makes itself. (Variety, similarly, suggested it could play on CNN at some point.) Given that we’re supposed to be getting a brand new Superman in David Corenswet in 2025, the opportunities basically write themselves. And should the deal fall through, Neon or Netflix (which now has DCEU movies on its service) might pick it up instead.
Directed by Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui, Super/Man follows the actor’s tenure as the Man of Steel. His children Matt, Alexandra, and William, were all involved in the documentary’s making, which features previously unreleased home movies to show his life was changed after he was paralyzed in a 1995 horse competition and his disability activism thereafter. While doing promo for the documentary, the children revealed they both haven’t seen The Flash, they also had no involvement with their father’s Superman recreated via deepfake cameo towards the end of that movie.
That last point understandably drew plenty of ire WB’s way last week, and it makes them potentially grabbing Reeve’s documentary a little jarring. While the studio obviously has a hold on that particular Superman (and those afterwards), it does feel a little in bad taste to “resurrect” a dead actor and then own his life story about said character for however long until it gets removed from Max.
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