The DC Superhero The Big Bang Theory's Jim Parsons Almost Played
The world of film and television is full of almosts, could haves, and might have beens, and Kevin Smith gave the world a glimpse at a doozie he says he was involved with "like two years ago." It happened during the most recent episode of the filmmaker's "FatMan Beyond" podcast, during which Smith revealed the result of dive into an old laptop computer.
The anecdote reveals that Smith was hired to write a script for an animated series featuring a certain classic DC Comics superhero. The plan, as Smith tells it, was for Jim Parsons of "The Big Bang Theory" to voice the hero, a prospect that might be pretty tantalizing for fans of the long-running CBS sitcom, as well as fans of the beloved comic book superhero.
Unfortunately, it doesn't look like Smith sees much possibility of the project ever getting off the ground. But it's still fun to read and think about what such a series might have been like. So what DC heroes was Parsons supposed to voice?
Kevin Smith wrote a script for a Plastic Man series that would have starred Parsons
Plastic Man, the fantastic-elastic crimefighter with the wacky sense of humor and the distinctive goggle-shades, is a natural fit for animation. He had his own cartoon series back in the late '70s and early '80s (via IMDb), and he's made plenty of other appearances in TV animation since. It makes sense that Warner Bros. would have wanted Smith, with his myriad of credits in the comic book world, to take a stab at a new animated take on the character.
As Smith himself tells it, "I was deep diving into one of my laptops looking for an old photo and I found a script to 'Plastic Man' that I wrote for a 'Plastic Man' cartoon like two years ago, or something like that." According to Smith, Jim Parsons was going to voice Plastic Man. But no matter how promising such a collaboration might seem, Smith also says that he "looked at the script and I was like, 'Wow man, they f***ing paid me to write this and it's never going to happen.'"
It's a bummer, but Plastic Man fans are used to disappointment by now. He was supposed to get his own feature film in the '90s, with one script completed by none other than the Wachowskis, but that project never came to fruition either (via Vanity Fair). Fans of Smith might hear this and also be reminded of "Superman Lives," the abortive "Superman" script the screenwriter penned for Tim Burton that similarly never got off the ground.