The first trailer for Licorice Pizza, the upcoming drama from director Paul Thomas Anderson, has finally been released online after running in select theaters throughout September. The film about a 1970s child star, played by Cooper Hoffman (Philip Seymour Hoffman's son), is already being talked up as an Oscar contender. But perhaps the most exciting thing about the movie to a certain breed of Hollywood history nerd is the infamous real-life character Bradley Cooper is playing in it.
Cooper's character, seen in the trailer bragging about dating Barbra Streisand and wrecking the windows of two cars with hammers, is the hairdresser-turned-movie producer Jon Peters. There are a number of reasons you might have heard about Peters; perhaps you saw his name in the credits of films like A Star is Born or the Tim Burton Batman movies, or maybe you read the headlines about the sexual harassment allegations against him. However, he is probably best known for his involvement in the aborted production of Superman Lives.
Superman Lives is one of the most infamous never-made blockbusters of all time. It would have starred Nicolas Cage as Superman and been directed by Tim Burton. Early drafts of the script were written by Kevin Smith, who went on to tell the story of his involvement in this strange production on his college speaking tour recorded in the DVD An Evening with Kevin Smith.
According to Smith, Peters' three major demands at the start of Superman Lives' development were that Superman couldn't fly, couldn't wear his iconic red-and-blue suit and had to fight a giant mechanical spider in the third act. In the documentary The Death of "Superman Lives": What Happened?, Peters denied making the first two demands but admitted he did want the giant mechanical spider. It seems Peters was always changing his mind on what the film needed to be, later adding demands for Brainiac to have a robot sidekick, fight two polar bears and give Lex Luthor a "space dog."
The production of Superman Lives fell apart in 1998. Warner Bros. was nervous about the prospects of a mega-budget superhero movie after the disappointment of Batman & Robin, and Burton did not enjoy working with Peters. Peters did, however, get a giant mechanical spider included in his next movie, Wild, Wild West. Peters went on to produce Superman Returns and held executive producer credit on Man of Steel, though Christopher Nolan banned him from the set following the harassment allegations against him.
Much of Licorice Pizza's storyline is still shrouded in mystery, and it's not entirely clear what role Cooper's fictionalized Jon Peters plays in the movie. The movie is set two decades before the Superman Lives debacle, but maybe even in the '70s, Peters was dreaming of mechanical spiders.
To see how Jon Peters plays into the movie, Licorice Pizza will be released in theaters on Nov. 26.