After over a decade of false starts, Warner Bros was nearly ready to accept that maybe Superman would never return to the big screen. That is until Bryan Singer, fresh of the success of X2: X-Men United, pitched a concept for a Superman movie that would use the first two Christopher Reeve films as a starting point, and bring the Man of Tomorrow into the modern world of today.

Singer would bring along his X-Men collaborators Dan Harris and Michael Dougherty to write the script with Kevin Spacey in mind for Lex Luthor. Brandon Routh, an unknown actor who had tested for the role on a previous iteration of the project, was cast to take over the iconic role of Clark Kent/Superman from Christopher Reeve.

The film would be an expensive endeavor, with an over $200 million budget that had purportedly taken on the burden of lost development costs from unmade Superman films; and when SUPERMAN RETURNS hit cinemas in the summer of 2006, with months of hype and internet speculation behind, the film was received with a collective shrug from audiences.

Joining Nick and Scott to discuss the ways in which a Superman movie could seem to have so much on its mind, without having anything to say (or does it?) is DC Cinematic Minute host Mark Ybarra.

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