After the 1987 release of "Superman: IV - The Quest for Peace", comic book writer (and then writer of the Superboy TV show) Cary Bates was brought in by producers Ilya & Alexander Salkind to write a screenplay for a fifth movie that would return the film franchise to it's past glory. Unfortunately, the film would never see the light of day after Warner Bros. regained the rights to the character which resulted in the Man of Steel not returning to the big screen until 2006.

In a recent interview with Newsarama, Bates talked about his involvement and ideas for what would have been "Superman: V". Here are some of the highlights from the discussion:

The Plot:
"The intent was to leapfrog over Superman III and especially IV, and return the series to the high mark achieved in 1 and 2. It was our desire to do a fully developed, balls-out science fiction story pitting Superman and Brainiac against each other mano a mano."

"Brainiac comes to Earth for the first time and shrinks Metropolis, adding it to his interplanetary collection of miniaturized cities. But because he becomes aware of the unique super-powered being in his latest acquisition, Brainiac miniaturizes himself and ventures into the bottled Metropolis in person. This leads to a knock-down drag-out battle that ends in what appears to be Superman’s death."

"A split-second before his atoms would’ve been permanently disintegrated, they are sucked into a bottle-city a few rows over... Kandor. There he is 'reborn' as a mortal man, where he gets to reconnect with his Kryptonian roots as he begins the arduous process of rehabilitating himself and eventually escaping from Kandor to resume his battle with Brainiac."

Brainiac:
"While this two-tier approach to Brainiac proved to be an extremely important component to the plot, the original reason was much more pragmatic. Our Brainiac had to be human much of time, or the producers would’ve faced the dilemma of throwing away big bucks to hire a big-name actor who would be reduced to an unseen voice-over artist for a mechanical or CGI robot."

Why It Never Got Made:
"The whole time I was on location in Europe with Columbus, I was also writing the second draft of the Superman script, which by now had been re-titled Superman Reborn. However, by the time production on Columbus wrapped, Warners had just announced they were about to go into production with the Lois and Clark TV series. Unfortunately, as almost always happens when a project changes hands or studios, all previous drafts go out the window and they start from scratch."

"Seeing Superman Reborn get scuttled was a huge disappointment at the time for everyone involved, but in retrospect the screenplay was probably too ambitious and ahead of its time, given the modest projected budget. The status quo of special effects and CGI tech was in its infancy back in 1991 so I suspect our elaborate Kandor sequences and the titanic battles between Superman and Brainiac would have been sharply scaled back had the screenplay been filmed."

Superman Returns And The Upcoming Christopher Nolan Reboot:
"As someone who’s spent nearly four decades with the character, I enjoyed the film and could appreciate much of what Bryan Singer and his writers brought to the character. My main reservations would have been the long-term wisdom of introducing the super-son subplot and perhaps an over-emphasis on 'homage' elements that made it difficult for the new film to completely step out from the shadows of Superman 1 and 2."

"Given the fantastic job Nolan and his team did on the Batman reboot, I for one am looking forward to this immensely!"

Check out the complete interview at Newsarama.com.