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For most fans, 1987’s Superman IV: The Quest for Peace is a poor send-off for Christopher Reeve’s cinematic Man of Steel. With its poor quality special effects and muddled screenplay, it’s easily the worst movie of the actor’s time as Superman, and a sad note to end on. What most fans don’t know, however, is that there was almost a Superman V — a movie that would have brought closure to Superman’s relationship with Lois Lane while also bringing one of the character’s biggest villains to the big screen for the first time. Oh, and it would have been written by a fan-favorite scriptwriter from DC’s Superman comic books, as well.

What would have been the fifth Christopher Reeve Superman movie started when Alexander and Ilya Salkind, the producing team behind the first three movies, reacquired the rights to the character after the failure of Superman IV, which had been produced by Cannon Films. At the time, the Salkinds were riding high on the success of the Superboy TV show, and believed that Superman could fly one more time on the big screen if done right — which included using talent they already had under contract, like Superboy TV series story editor (and former DC Comics writer) Cary Bates.

It helped that Bates had already pitched an idea for Superman IV that the Salkinds were familiar with — and one that featured a villain they’d always wanted to bring to the screen: Brainiac, the alien robot who liked to shrink down cities throughout the galaxy and add them to a collection onboard his space ship. In 1989, a deal was struck that Bates and fellow Superboy story editor Mark Jones would start work on a screenplay as the movie quietly moved into pre-production.

Brainiac was far from the biggest threat Superman would face in the movie. As Bates would share in 2013’s Back Issue #109, “The screenplay had a subplot about Superman and Lois reaching a turning point in their relationship; the film opens with recent events causing her to realize Superman’s first priority will always be protecting mankind, so there can be no practical future for them as a couple. Thus, she accepts a job offer from a paper in another city. But as fate would have it, it’s when she’s on her way to the airport that Brainiac’s ship arrives. She ends up as one of the citizens trapped inside the shrunken city.”

How could things get worse? Well, Brainiac seemingly kills Superman in front of Lois midway though the movie, causing her to grieve for the hero — who is, of course, not dead at all, but merely transported inside another of Brainiac’s shrunken cities: Kandor, from the planet Krypton. There, the hero is given a chance to heal and regroup, while also reconnecting with his Kryptonian heritage, all building him back up for one final special-effects-heavy fight against the villain that ends with Superman saving the day and restoring Metropolis to its rightful place back on Earth.

But what about Superman and Lois? Well, that’s the fun part. “Profoundly affected by their separation and harrowing life-and-death ordeal, they both decide they want their relationship to continue,” Bates told Back Issue. “The film ends with Superman (finally) revealing his secret identity to Lois as he asks her to marry him.” All of this back in 1989, years before the characters would do the same in comic books. (Superman revealed his secret identity to Lois in 1991's Action Comics #662, for those keeping track.)

So, why didn’t Superman V happen? Ultimately, it's all down to studio politics — by the time the movie was almost ready to film, the success of Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman movie had convinced Warner Bros. to try and bring adaptations of its superheroes back in-house, especially as Warner Bros. Television was trying to get Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman off the ground. The Salkinds lost the rights to the character, and the project went into limbo.

Superman wouldn’t be seen in movie theaters until 2006’s Superman Returns — another attempt to continue the Christopher Reeve canon, albeit with different actors. But think of the Superman V we almost had that could have let Reeve, Margot Kidder, and that original cast give the characters (and the audience) the happy ending they deserved. As the DC sales slogan once put it, just imagine…!

James Gunn's Superman is flying into theaters soon enough, and Popverse has all you need to prepare. Refreshing your cinematic memory with our Superman movie watch order, learn what we know about the upcoming Superman movie, Superman's S-Shield through the ages, and read about what DC is doing ahead of their flagship hero's triumphant return.