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I remember when I had this much time on my hands.
Superman IV: The Quest for Peace - Wikipedia
Everything about this film seemed to go wrong. Superman III was terrible kitsch and the franchise looked dead in the water after Supergirl, in which Christopher Reeve was slated to cameo, bombed. However the rights were obtained by the Golan-Globus group and they approached Reeve, with no script in mind to reprise his role.
Reeve rightly voiced some reluctance at the manner Superman III had dissolved into absurdist comedy, so Golan & Globus offered him an insane deal involving story input, free reign over a project of his choice and the possible notion of his directing a fifth Superman title.
Due to budget cuts, the infamous scene on 42nd Street where Superman walks up to the United Nations was actually filmed in the rainy English city of Milton Keynes.
Even the score suffered. John Williams was unavailable, so he elected Alexander Courage (who sadly passed on May 15th and prompted this post) to score the thematic material for the film in his stead; with the Symphony-Orchestra Graunke in Munich. To quote Wikipedia directly:
“As the sessions progressed it became apparent that the players were not up to the challenge of some of the complex action cues. After the completion of recording on May 18, the sessions in Germany were canceled and the rest of the score was recorded with the National Philharmonic Orchestra at CTS Studios in England from May 23-June 2. Courage scored 100 minutes of music for the film and also recorded album versions of three new John Williams themes. A soundtrack album was prepared in 1987 by Cannon’s musical advisor Jack Fishman, but it was aborted when most of the music selected for it (including three songs by his son Paul Fishman) ended up getting cut from the film. No music from Superman IV was released for over twenty years until the Film Score Monthly soundtrack label presented the complete score as part of their 8-CD anthology Superman: The Music (1978-1988) in 2008.”
