In 1986, Ilya and Alexander Salkind, having had their fill of the Superman film franchise, sublet the screen rights to Cannon Films for a few million dollars. Cannon convinced a reluctant Christopher Reeve to reprise his marquee role by promising to fund his pet project, Street Smart. While Reeve imagined a big-budget morality tale detailing the horror of nuclear warfare, Cannon's bleeding coffers promised unpleasantness of another kind.

Satisfied that the most crucial component of their marquee release of 1987 was secured, Cannon opened their checkbook and left Reeve to go shoot Street Smart while they solidified plans for the conductor of Superman IV. Richard Lester had been approached, but his ailing health only reinforced his commitment to stray from the series. Wes Craven, who had found a measure of fame with his Nightmare on Elm Street, was also courted, but he declined.

With the help of Warner Bros., which had agreed to provide Superman IV with a hefty $40 million in financing, Cannon turned to a no-longer-exiled Richard Donner. Studio chieftains Terry Semel and Bob Daly knocked on the door of Tom Mankiewicz, who had a standing office at the lot. “Will you guys do IV? We gotta get this thing back to where it was. Price is no object,” Semel pleaded.

Mankiewicz conferred with Donner. Ideas were batted around, but eventually both men realized they had depleted their creative reserves regarding the character. “Dick and I sat down and talked and said, ‘Jesus, we already did everything in the first two,’” Mankiewicz recalled. “Dick was into Lethal Weapon. I was convinced I was going to be a great director, so I was off developing my own movies.

“We brought him here from Krypton, he grew up in Kansas, came to Metropolis. In II he loses his powers, he regains his powers, Kryptonite had been introduced, missiles, saving the world. He turns the world backwards. What’s left to do, you know? It’s futile. We’ve done it. Let’s move on.” Mankiewicz returned to Warners with word from both filmmakers: Let someone else pilot it.

For a time, that someone else was to be Reeve himself. Like George Reeves before him, the actor began to figure that the best way to escape the Superman persona was to make a gradual move behind the scenes. He and Cannon toyed with the idea of having the star take over the directing chores, but eventually they mutually decided that the scope of the picture might be beyond the ability of a novice. As a compromise, Reeve would do some second-unit direction.

Sidney Furie had come into the Golan-Globus offices to pitch another project. The Canadian had impressed Cannon with his minimalist approach to Iron Eagle, a rah-rah aerial drama that preceded Top Gun and had done appreciable business. Furie, enamored with the prospect of directing a big-budget attraction, accepted Golan’s offer to helm Superman IV. Despite the seeming enormity of the task, Furie had little to lose: Superman III had underwhelmed, and Warners made it clear that they would be satisfied with even half of that sequel’s take. The director began soliciting both Donner and Jeannot Szwarc for advice on the best way to orchestrate the flying sequences.

While Furie busied himself with technical lessons, Reeve was petitioning producers to settle on a story with a social conscience. The prior Superman films had been largely heartfelt, but the dramatics were limited to immediate physical danger. The stories didn't deal with "issues," something that Mankiewicz had purposely avoided. He tried to hammer the point home when Reeve approached him for advice.

“Here are the rules,” he told Reeve. “Don’t ever get involved with something Superman could fix. He could disarm the world in fifteen minutes. He doesn’t have to go to the UN. If he feels that strongly about it, he could get rid of all the missiles. Superman could feed the world if he wanted to. He could establish agricultural fields in outer space. Don’t bring up things like that.”

It was the same concern that had afflicted the comics writers for decades: Superman could have ended World War II in seconds. As the most powerful being on Earth, his will is absolute. Better to keep him busy with the assaulting aliens and natural disasters.

Reeve wasn’t convinced. Having seen a documentary titled A Message to Our Parents, he was compelled by the debate over the nuclear arms race. During a story meeting with screenwriters Mark Rosenthal and Lawrence Konner, the trio escaped a rainstorm by taking refuge in an IMAX theater that happened to be screening The Dream is Alive, a visceral tribute to the beauty--and frailty--of Kal-El's adoptive planet. Inspired by the subject matter, he convinced the scribes to make nuclear disarmament the main story thread for Superman IV.

Golan and Globus didn’t raise any objections. An earlier, shakier concept had imagined Superman suffering from an accelerated aging process and dying, visiting a kind of Valhalla for superheroes. The patriotism promised by Reeve’s suggestion seemed better suited for the property. Konner and Rosenthal, in concert with Reeve, began hammering out the story beats, with Reeve of the mind that Superman could act as the candy around his “pill,” the warning of nuclear danger. This serious business, Reeve believed, would be a proper antidote to the misguided folly of Superman III.

The grim issue had actually been explored through superhero theatrics twice before. In Marvel Comics’ 1985 miniseries Squadron Supreme, a cadre of heroes take it upon themselves to disarm the world’s superpowers. Their control soon becomes dictatorial when they institute further revisions to society, enforcing mind control in prisons and even influencing medicine to come up with a solution to death. The dangers of absolute authority are revealed when the team eventually suffers casualties and civilians revolt.

More distressingly, the idea was also present in a treatment written by Barry E. Taff and Kenneth P. Stoller and submitted to Reeve in 1985. In the story dubbed Superman: The Confrontation, the titular character immerses himself in nuclear disarmament and even perishes--curiously similar to what was later pitched for the film.

The two novice screenwriters sued Reeve for $45 million, claiming intellectual property theft and submitting that Reeve had even phoned them to discuss the screenplay. Reeve acknowledged that the document had been sent to his office and insisted that the writers had then harassed his secretary on the phone. To placate them, Reeve had phoned and offered compliments on the story, which he later claimed he had not actually read.

The suit dragged on for three years. After an L.A. court found Reeve had done nothing wrong, the writers took the matter to the California Supreme Court, where it was summarily tossed out. Though Reeve was not required to pay any form of compensation, the legal costs would burn up a good bit of his Superman IV salary.

He would not be the only one suffering the indignity of vanishing funds. In 1986, Cannon bore the brunt of a $60 million loss, its enormous slate of forty-three pictures a lesson in gross excess. Its E ticket to mainstream respect, Over the Top, had been greeted with incredulity by audiences. Though they revered Stallone in action roles, the endless close-ups of his grimacing maw, struggling though a sport as viscerally dull as arm wrestling, was box office Kryptonite. Golan, who had actually directed the picture, was devastated.

Bankruptcy was imminent, and in an effort to curtail runaway costs, Cannon slashed Superman IV’s budget, redirecting all but $17 million of Warners’ $40 million grant to their thirty other films in production in an attempt to spread the risk around.

The repercussions were obvious. At a third of the original’s budget, with ten years’ worth of inflation to contend with, this would be the most economically strapped Superman production in decades. Crew members who had been hired for their prowess in effects work were dismissed for cheaper, substandard talent from Israel who had little experience with a film of this scale. That was never more evident than in a scene in which Superman was to march down the streets of New York and into the United Nations building. Cannon had purchased Elstree Studios in England and insisted the footage be shot there instead of on location; the result was a shoddy mess.

The haphazard production suffered a further setback when stuntman John Lees fell and broke both his arms while dangling from a harness. He successfully litigated against what he dubbed “poor working conditions” and was awarded $422,000.

Reeve was livid. His aim had been to deliver a literate, substantial film, but the producers wanted something akin to their endless Death Wish franchise--a quick and dirty cheapie. His contract, unfortunately, wasn’t contingent upon how much money was spent on filming. He reported to work on schedule, diverting his energy into second-unit duties. If the film were to be crippled from the outset, at least he’d be able to log time behind the camera. At one point, Reeve took costar Jon Cryer aside and told him to steel himself.

“This movie,” Reeve cautioned, “is going to be terrible.”