Apparently, in anticipation of Superman Returns Warner is preparing new special edition DVDs for Superman II, III, and IV. The hottest rumor is that this could include a new Richard Donner Director's Cut of Superman II, which would be great news on many fronts. The story here is that original Superman director Richard Donner shot enough footage for nearly two full movies, and before he could finish both of them, he had to rush the first movie into theaters. So, he finished the first movie, but before he could resume with Superman II, the producers fired him. Enter a new director, Richard Lester, who supposedly tossed out more than half of the footage already shot for Superman II and reshot much of the movie.

Even though at the time it came out, Superman II fared pretty well with critics and audiences, in subsequent years, it has not aged nearly as well as the first Superman has. With this backdrop, there's been a pretty steady clamoring on fan sites over the last few years for someone at Warner to put together a cut of Superman II with the Richard Donner-directed scenes restored. If the rumors are true, this would be great news for those of us who've wondered how Superman II would have turned out if Donner had finished the movie himself.

The special edition DVDs would also come with new 5.1 soundtracks and bonus discs, which would finally remedy the abysmal DVD treatment that II, III, and IV got with their original movie-only 2.0 DD releases. I never bought those DVDs because I saw both Superman II and Superman III in theaters with 70mm six-track prints. For those titles to subsequently come out on DVD with 2.0 soundtracks, when they got six-track theatrical releases, was inexcusable.

On paper, it seems that Warner has got a killer set of DVDs coming out for the Batman movies (two-disc special editions with new DTS soundtracks). A similarly stellar treatment for the Superman movies would be welcome news.

http://www.supermancinema.co.uk/