Superman (1978 film) finish writing duties. George MacDonald Fraser was later hired to do some work on the script, but he says he did little. Their script was submitted in July 1976, and carried a camp tone, including a cameo appearance by Telly Savalas as his "Kojak" character. The scripts for "Superman" and "Superman II" were now at over 400 pages combined. Pre-production started at Cinecittà Studios in Rome, with sets starting construction and flying tests being unsuccessfully experimented. "In Italy," producer Ilya Salkind remembered, "we lost about $2 million [on flying tests]." Marlon Brando found out he could not film in Italy
Superman in film Before the failure of "", Cannon Films considered producing a fifth film with Albert Pyun as director. Cannon's bankruptcy resulted in the film rights reverting to Ilya and Alexander Salkind. Ilya Salkind wrote the story for "Superman V" (also known as "Superman: The New Movie") with "Superboy" writers Cary Bates and Mark Jones in the early-1990s. The story had Superman dying and resurrecting in the shrunken, bottled Krypton city of Kandor. The premise of Superman's death and rebirth coincidentally predated "The Death of Superman". Salkind, Bates and Jones developed two drafts of the script, with Christopher Reeve set to reprise