'The Flash': The film's most surprising cameo, explained

Warning: Spoilers for "The Flash" will follow.

It's a bird! It's a Cage! "The Flash" is packed to the brim with surprise DC cameos, as Helen Slater's Supergirl, Christopher Reeve's and George Reeves' Superman, and Adam West's and George Clooney's Batman all show up. The standout appearance, though, may be a version of Superman played by Nicolas Cage, who's reprising the role from a film that doesn't exist. But it almost did.

Superman lives

This cameo is a deep-cut reference to "Superman Lives," an unmade Superman movie that would have starred Cage.

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Development on the film, originally titled "Superman Reborn," began in the 1990s, and a couple of screenwriters took a crack at drafts before Kevin Smith was hired to write his own. The "Clerks" director worked with producer Jon Peters, though as Smith recounted in "An Evening with Kevin Smith," Peters had a few unusual requests. According to Smith, the producer demanded Superman not wear his suit or fly and was also weirdly insistent that he "fight a giant spider in the third act." (Peters denied the first two mandates in the documentary "The Death of 'Superman Lives': What Happened?" but confirmed he wanted Superman to fight a giant spider, which Smith dubbed a "Thanagarian snare beast" in his script.)

Despite the title, the movie was to draw on "The Death of Superman," a story from the comics in which Superman is killed fighting Doomsday before being resurrected. The villains, Brainiac and Lex Luthor, were also set to be featured in the film. Cage was signed on to play Superman, and Chris Rock would have played Superman's friend Jimmy Olsen. Other actors who were eyed include Christopher Walken for Brainiac, Kevin Spacey for Lex Luthor, and Sandra Bullock for Lois Lane.

Coming off his "Batman" movies starring Michael Keaton, Tim Burton was tapped to direct, though he rejected Smith's draft and brought in a new writer, Wesley Strick, whom he worked with on "Batman Returns." Strick was eventually replaced with yet another writer, Dan Gilroy, who later told IndieWire the film would have explored the "psychological trauma" of Superman realizing he's an alien. "Our Superman was in therapy at the beginning of the film," Gilroy noted.

The film got far enough into development that Cage filmed a costume test in 1997. His suit was imagined as being like a "chemical baby blanket" with a "life of its own," Burton can be heard describing in the footage. "It was more of a 1980s Superman with like, the samurai black long hair," Cage told Variety. "I thought it was gonna be a really different, sort of emo Superman, but we never got there."

The death and return of Superman

So why didn't they? It sounds like the budget was a big part of it. The film "got caught in an unfortunate moment in time" at Warner Bros. after the studio had "several films fail right around it," so "suddenly, the economic pressure" over the large price tag increased, producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura recalled in "The Death of 'Superman Lives.'" In 1997, "Batman & Robin" and Kevin Costner's "The Postman" were among the studio's box office disappointments. Burton's take was also considered risky. His "Batman Returns" grossed less than the original in 1992, possibly because of how dark it was. "I think they didn't totally believe that Tim could make a Superman that would be commercial," Peters explained in the documentary.

"Superman Lives" was shut down in 1998 weeks before production was set to begin. "We have decided to postpone the start of 'Superman' till such a time as the budget is appropriate and the script realizes its potential," Di Bonaventura said at the time. Burton moved on to direct "Sleepy Hollow," and it took until 2006 for another Superman movie to finally hit theaters with Bryan Singer's "Superman Returns." This was more in line with the Christopher Reeve films and not so much the "emo Superman" take that Burton and Cage had planned. The casting of Kevin Spacey as Lex Luthor, though, carried over. "The Death of Superman" storyline eventually inspired Zack Snyder's "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice" in 2016. Smith also directed an episode of "Supergirl" in 2017 called "Supergirl Lives," which referenced his infamous "Thanagarian snare beast."

In the years since the studio pulled the plug, Nicolas Cage playing Superman has been among the most fascinating what-if scenarios for movie fans. By 2018, Warner Bros. finally did let Cage portray Superman, at least in a voiceover role, as he had a part as the character in the irreverent animated film "Teen Titans Go! To the Movies." "It wasn't really the version that Tim Burton and I had in mind, but it was just fun," Cage told USA Today.

But "The Flash" finally brings Cage's Superman to live-action for the first time, allowing a movie about alternate realities to provide viewers a glimpse into an alternate history of Hollywood. "Although the role was a cameo, he dove into it," director Andy Muschietti told Esquire Middle East. In an inside joke about the production of "Superman Lives," Cage's Superman is also fighting a giant spider in the scene. It took over 20 years, but that spider-obsessed producer's dream finally came true.