The movie was penned by Kevin Smith and the script can be found online via a Google search pretty quickly. I've read it, and it didn't totally float my boat. Braniac reminded me too much of the little alien inside the old man's head in Men In Black. Pardon the pun, but it seemed too comical.
Anyway, Tim Burton was attached to direct. Then, if memory serves me correctly, he had the premise re-written by Andrew Kevin Walker and Kevin Smith's script was chucked. Then, to everybody's horror, Nicholas Cage was signed to play the part for $17 million in a pay-or-play deal. The budget came in at $140 million and Warner shut down production before it started. Burton went on to do Sleepy Hollow from there, but was publicly very upset about this. I think Cage, in a moment of true magnanimity, decided not to make Warner's pay him the $17 million they were on the hook for, realizing that it would buy him some really good Karma in Hollywood (which, frankly, it did).
The rest of the world sighed in relief. Aside from old issues of Entertainment Weekly that attest to this part of the soap opera, Patton Oswalt has a stand up routine in which he talks about Nicholas Cage as Superman. He embellishes by having Nick Nolte join as Batman. If you've never heard this, it's hysterical. Nolte as Han Solo too.
But I digress. This early chapter in the "Let's make another Superman Movie" soap opera was followed by the McG/Ratner/Bay/McG debacle.
There is a wonderful fest of production ideas from Jon Peters, who wanted to have Superman have a robot sidekick, get his powers from the suit, and fighting giant polar bears and robot spiders in the Arctic. This is the best development in the screwed-up era of this film.
Here are some links to amuse you all:
http://www.bluetights.net/theplanet/showthread.php?t=724
http://williamgibsonboard.com/eve/ubb.x/a/tpc/f/2866012481/m/5311047921
http://www.thenakedcritic.com/20040905paparazzi.htm
http://www.supermanhomepage.com/movies/movies.php?topic=regarding-jon-peters