Why Will Smith Turned Down The Chance To Play Superman

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After more than a decade of the decidedly gloomy Snyderverse, James Gunn's charming crowd-pleaser "Superman" has made DC movies fun again. Ignoring the 1940s serial and movies in which Superman appears but wasn't the main character, Gunn's "Superman" is the seventh live-action adaptation of the character, and while it was never going to match the legendary status of Richard Donner's seminal 1978 film, it has at least given us an original vision of the Man of Steel.

The same can't exactly be said of 2006's "Superman Returns." The film was essentially director Bryan Singer's ode to the Richard Donner/Christopher Reeve films, and actually functioned as a direct sequel to 1980's "Superman II." That said, among Superman movies, "Returns" is far from the worst entry, and despite Singer leaning on the Supes-as-Christ allegory a little too hard at times, is full of great set-pieces and features a solid turn from Brandon Routh in the lead.

"Superman Returns" didn't get a sequel, but not because it was an out and out failure. In fact, it made $391 million at the global box office, which at the time was a solid take. Unfortunately the movie cost an unbelievable $232 million to make, ensuring it almost certainly made no money for Warner Bros. After several people involved with the movie started to drop out of preparations for a sequel, everything sort of fell apart before Zack Snyder reinvented Superman with "Man of Steel" in 2013 — much to Richard Donner's dismay. Meanwhile, having seemingly been set on a path to megastardom at first, Routh sort of faded into obscurity in the years after the movie. With that in mind, it's probably for the best that Will Smith decided to turn down the film.

Will Smith has made some mistakes in his career — and that's putting it lightly. Anyone following the man's post-slap career and his recent musical endeavors will surely have asked the question, "Is Will Smith okay?" But some of his lesser mistakes involve turning down roles that he really should have taken. Smith turned down the role of Neo in "The Matrix," then, 25 years later, made a music video inserting himself back into the movie in yet another "Is Will Smith okay?" moment. Smith turned down Christopher Nolan's "Inception" because he "didn't get it" and he even almost turned down "Men in Black" until Steven Spielberg stepped in.

As such, the "Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" star has demonstrated a remarkable talent for saying "no" to movies that went on to become mega-hits. But one role that isn't so easily summed up is that of Superman in "Superman Returns. Speaking to MTV News in 2008, the actor said:

"The last 'Superman' I got offered, the script came, and I was like, 'There is no way I'm playing Superman!' Because I had already done Jim West [of 'Wild Wild West'], and you can't be messing up white people's heroes in Hollywood! You mess up white people's heroes in Hollywood, you'll never work in this town again!"

There was so much that went wrong with 1999's "Wild Wild West," but I'm not sure the movie became the critical and commercial disaster it did simply because Smith "messed up white people's heroes" — though he may not have been all that serious when he said that. That film was a movie reboot of the 1960s TV western "The Wild Wild West," and director Barry Sonnenfeld claimed in his memoir "Best Possible Place, Worst Possible Time: True Stories from a Career in Hollywood," that original star, Robert Conrad, actually threatened violence if Jim West was played by a Black man. So there is some basis for Smith's assessment, but the real issues with the film itself included the complete lack of chemistry between Smith and his co-star Kevin Kline and the fact that, as Terrence Rafferty of The New Yorker put it, the movie was "utterly without feeling, and pointless."

It's hard to say what would have happened with "Superman Returns" had Will Smith taken the lead role. In a sense, he was right to turn down the movie simply based on what would happen with it. "Returns" is far from a disaster of "Wild Wild West" proportions, but it's also mostly overlooked, which for a star of Smith's magnitude (his most recent debacles notwithstanding) wouldn't have been the best look.

On the other hand, Smith's involvement could have completely changed the impact and legacy of "Returns." Not only would he have been the first Black on-screen Superman, he was a much bigger star than Brandon Routh, which would have surely increased the film's appeal, potentially resulting in a bigger box office take and, who knows, perhaps a completely different on-screen history for the Man of Steel.

At one point, there were two Black Superman projects in development, one being a J.J. Abrams-produced movie written by Ta-Nehisi Coates and the other an HBO Max series with Michael B. Jordan attached. Former Superman actor Henry Cavill gave his personal blessing for the Black Superman projects, saying that the superhero was "far more than skin color," but we've yet to see any such project materialize. Now that James Gunn has taken over as DC head honcho (alongside producer Peter Safran) and launched a new cohesive universe, it seems likely that neither of those projects will actually happen. Had Smith taken the "Superman Returns" gig, then, he would at least have made history, and as such, turned "Returns" into something more than a solid but forgettable entry in the Man of Steel's cinematic canon.