Hollywoodland turns 20: Ben Affleck wore the cape a decade before the cowl, and Warner Bros. fought the movie over every S
On this day in 2006, a noir about the death of TV's first famous Superman opened with Ben Affleck in the lead. Twenty years on, its director is telling the stories the studio sat on — the banned title, the forbidden S, and the fake 1950s footage they had to shoot themselves.
On September 8, 2006, a noir about the death of television's first famous Superman opened in US theaters with Ben Affleck under the cape. Hollywoodland turns 20 today, and its director Allen Coulter marked the date by telling Gold Derby the stories the studio preferred to keep quiet at the time — starting with the title Warner Bros. made them drop.
The film cast Affleck as George Reeves, the actor who played Superman on 1950s TV and died of a gunshot in 1959, officially a suicide, eternally a conspiracy magnet. Coulter caught his leading man at the lowest point of his career, and says the desperation was part of the casting:
"He was, I think, anxious to prove that he was an actor, not just a movie star, not just a pop hero. We caught Ben at an interesting moment. He was coming off the J. Lo fiasco."
The studio that owned Superman was not amused
Warner Bros. controlled DC — and had just released Bryan Singer's Superman Returns three months earlier. The list of what the Hollywoodland team was not allowed to do, per Coulter:
- The original title died. The film was called Truth, Justice and the American Way until WB objected to hanging Superman's motto on a movie about Superman's death.
- No S in the marketing. Promo materials could not show Affleck's Reeves wearing the chest emblem.
- No real footage. WB refused to license clips from Adventures of Superman, so the production rebuilt the 1950s show shot by shot and filmed its own version.
A movie about an actor who couldn't escape Superman was itself forbidden from showing Superman. The trap the film investigates closed on the film.
What it bought Affleck — and what it couldn't buy Reeves
Affleck prepared like a man with something to prove, walking the set with a cassette player looping recordings of Reeves' voice to copy "the rhythms and timbre." It worked: the role took the Volpi Cup for best actor at Venice and a Golden Globe nomination, and started the rebuild that led straight to Gone Baby Gone and the directing career. The box office did not follow — under $15 million domestic, which Coulter blames on marketing that promised an L.A. Confidential-style murder mystery the movie never intended to be.
The film offers three versions of Reeves' death and endorses none. Coulter's summary of why the mystery endures: for the children of 1959, "it was kind of their version of JFK. It didn't compute, because how can Superman die from a bullet?" Reeves' biographer Jim Beaver, in the same anniversary piece, dismantles the "Superman curse" the case spawned — pointing out that Kirk Alyn, the screen's first Superman, died at 88.
The joke history played is well documented: ten years after playing the man destroyed by the cape, Affleck put on the cowl for Batman v Superman — for the same studio that once policed his S. Coulter says even he finds it ironic. Twenty years on, Hollywoodland remains the rare superhero-adjacent film with no powers in it at all: just fame, arithmetic, and a costume that outweighed the man.
Previously we wrote: Lori Loughlin posted "Here's to things working out" on Monday — and filed for divorce on Tuesday
