Original script

Once producers Ilya and Alexander Salkind decided they wanted to make a Superman movie, the pair approached ‘The Godfather’ author Mario Puzo to write a script.

Eventually, Puzo handed in a 500-page script that spanned two movies, which was tweaked by David and Leslie Newman and Robert Benton.

However, when director Richard Donner joined the project, he took one look at the screenplay and decided it needed a complete overhaul due to it “disparaging” the character.

He said: “It was disparaging. It was just gratuitous action. I’m reading this thing and Superman’s looking for Lex Luthor in Metropolis, and he’s looking for every bald head in the city. And then he flies down and taps a guy on the shoulder and it’s [Kojak’s] Telly Savalas, who hands him a lollipop and says, ‘Who loves ya, baby?’

“I was brought up on Superman as a kid. There was a whole point in my life where I read Superman. So, when I was finished with it, I was like, ‘Man, if they make this movie, they are destroying the legend of Superman.’ I wanted to do it just to defend him.”