Cary Bates's long lost SUPERMAN V script?

[JulianPerez]

Recently, I heard that Cary Bates wrote a script for SUPERMAN V sometime circa the early nineties that was not produced. Does anybody know anything else about it? Supposedly, it was going to involve Superman battling Brainiac in Kandor; one of the lasting influences of Bates's script was that nearly every other version of the Superman since then involved Brainiac.

At the time, the ADVENTURES OF SUPERBOY series was ruling television, and so the Salkinds (to whom the rights to Superman had regressed to after Golan-Globus failed to get an Albert Pyun version off the ground) wanted Superboy actor Gerard Christopher as Superman to take over from Reeves, making the movies a direct sequel to the Superboy series.

[Kurt Busiek]

Recently, I heard that Cary Bates wrote a script for SUPERMAN V sometime circa the early nineties that was not produced. Does anybody know anything else about it? Supposedly, it was going to involve Superman battling Brainiac in Kandor; one of the lasting influences of Bates's script was that nearly every other version of the Superman since then involved Brainiac.

I have a copy of it somewhere.  It got filed -- somewhere -- before I finished reading it, but what I read was good.  It had a great opening.

It did have Brainiac.

kdb

[Super Monkey]

Cary Bates was my Favorite Bronze Age Superman Writer.

from the famous Superman V: The Whole Sordid Saga article:

and the rights to Superman reverted back to the Salkinds. This was when Superboy was in full swing on TV, and the Salkinds decided to restart the Superman film series using Superboy as the prequel. Hence, Superman comic scribe Cary Bates and his Superboy writing partner Mark Jones were drafted to write a script pitting Superman against Brainiac in a story set in the bottled city of Kandor. Under the working title Superman: The New Movie, this film was to have been released in 1994, with Superboy star Gerard Christopher taking over for Reeve as Superman. (To this day, the deleted footage from Superman IV remains unaccounted for.)

Well, 1993 rolled around, and WB bought all the non-comics rights to Superman lock, stock, and barrel. WB forced the Salkinds to pull Superboy from the airwaves completely so as not to interfere with the planned Lois & Clark series (which Gerard Christopher auditioned for, and was turned down because he’d played Superboy—that’s how Dean Cain got the part), and scrapped the Bates/Jones script.

http://www.agonybooth.com/forum/topic2730.htm

[JulianPerez]

I have a copy of it somewhere.  It got filed -- somewhere -- before I finished reading it, but what I read was good.  It had a great opening.

It did have Brainiac.

kdb

Alright, it wasn't lost forever!

If you should ever find it again, please: details, details, details!

From one Cary Bates fan to another.