Ooh nimoy would have been great.

They should have had Brainiac as the villain and Leonard Nimoy should have played him.

I was just about to start the same thread.
They should have gone with Bizarro in Superman 4 as well.

How true. Alexander Salkind's son Ilya Salkind co-producer of the first three Superman movies had intally written a story treatment introducing Brainiac & included Supergirl/Kara as superman's new love interest but not as his cousin LOL, Lois Lane was still there and in the action in a major role, although Lana Lang wasn't written as-yet to eventually replace Lois for part III.
It's available online for pdf download somewhere
Warner Bros rejected the first draft script and they decided to make creative changes to go smaller in story with Smallville, Gus Gorman and the super computer instead resulting in a $35 million budget instead of what would have been more expensive and similar to the first two at around $50 mill.
Hope explains
Nothing is as it seems, nothing is just one thing and nothing is ever just over there;

I don't blame them for thinking Richard Pryor might mean a big box office return. He is a comedy legend and was very popular back then. But he overtook the movie and it became more of a Richard Pryor comedy featuring Superman(like all those Abbott and Costello Meet _____ movies).

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They were originally planning to include BRAINIAC and SUPERGIRL. I'm not sure why they changed it. Maybe DC didn't let them use Brainiac and rewrites wrote out Supergirl.
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