Later this summer, Warner Bros. will try to reboot Superman once again with Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel.  The DC Comics character has been a tough nut to crack since the original series of films that began with Richard Donner’s 1978 classic Superman, and there were many, many different iterations in development before the studio finally settled on Bryan Singer’s underperforming 2006 film Superman Returns.  Before Singer’s take got the go-ahead, though, countless proposals and scripts for a new Superman movie were in development with a number of directors like Tim Burton, Brett Ratner, and McG eyeing the property.

One of the more well-known Superman films that never came to be was Superman: Flyby, which was written by J.J. Abrams back in 2002.  Both McG and Ratner were attached to helm Flyby at different times, but the project was subsequently dropped in favor of Singer’s take on the character.  Now that Snyder is poised to present his own iteration of Superman with Man of Steel, Abrams recently spoke a bit about what he was trying to do with Flyby and how that relates to this summer’s Man of Steel.  Hit the jump to read on.

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Speaking with Empire, Abrams spoke a bit about how he envisioned Superman’s origin story in Flyby:

“The thing that I tried to emphasise in the story was that if the Kents found this boy, Kal-El, who had the power that he did, he would have most likely killed them both in short order. And the idea that these parents would see – if they were lucky to survive long enough – that they had to immediately begin teaching this kid to limit himself and to not be so fast, not be so strong, not be so powerful.

The result of that, psychologically, would be fear of oneself, self-doubt and being ashamed of what you were capable of. Extrapolating that to adulthood became a fascinating psychological profile of someone who was not pretending to be Clark Kent, but who was Clark Kent. Who had become that kind of a character who is not able or willing to accept who he was and what his destiny was.”

Abrams went on to talk about how Man of Steel looks to be taking a similar approach to the character:

“The idea in the movie was that he became Superman because he realised he had to finally own his strength and what he’d always been. I don’t know if that’s what Zack and Chris [Nolan] are doing, but it looks like that’s part of the idea and I could not be more thrilled to see that movie. That to me was always the way to go.”

Though Abrams’ Flyby never got made, the filmmaker clearly recovered quite well.  He recently signed on to direct this little thing called Star Wars and his upcoming sequel Star Trek Into Darkness is one of the most anticipated films of the year.  I’m always fascinated by projects that are destined to linger in development hell for eternity and the stories behind them, so it’s definitely fascinating to hear Abrams talk about Flyby with a new Superman film on the way.

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