Nicolas Cage was paid roughly twenty million dollars to legally portray Superman in a Tim Burton movie that was completely canceled just weeks before production was scheduled to begin.

A closer look

Nicolas Cage was paid roughly twenty million dollars to legally portray Superman in a Tim Burton movie that was completely canceled just weeks before production was scheduled to begin. Studio executives realized the budget was spiraling wildly out of control, largely because the script demanded that the Man of Steel fight a giant mechanical spider and wear a glowing, translucent suit of armor. There are leaked wardrobe fitting photos of Cage looking deeply unhinged in a rubber muscle suit with a glorious receding hairline, teasing a cinematic disaster so profound that it would have likely bankrupted the entire studio. Instead of making a movie, Warner Brothers basically handed an eccentric actor a generational fortune just to leave the building, making it the most lucrative gig of doing absolutely nothing in the entire history of modern entertainment!