Production chaos

Because producers Ilya and Alexander Salkind insisted that ‘Superman: The Movie’ and its sequel would film simultaneously, the cast and crew were put under an immense amount of pressure to complete the shoot.

Seven different shooting units would be filming at any given time, and Donner would constantly be driving between them on a golf cart to check up on the footage.

He later said: “I had a bunch of these handheld radios in my golf cart and I would get a call from production and they would say ‘Get over to stage blah blah. They’re doing the tests. We’re ready to shoot.’ I’d go over there and go back and shoot the principals, and then get a new setup that would take hours, because it was so vast.”

Eventually the completion of the first film was prioritised over completing both, and Donner was then fired from the sequel when it was only 75 percent complete. Richard Lester took over and re-shot much of the 1980 movie.