Superman Movies to be Re-Re-Released on DVD

About four years ago, Warner Bros. released new versions of the four Superman movies, including a brand new special edition of Superman: The Movie, adding new footage and other special features. The remaining three movie had little special features.

Now with Superman Returns hitting theatres in June, Warner Brothers is back at it again with plans to re-release (this would make the third release) the four movies, along with the spin-off Supergirl, spearheaded by oneof the producers, Ilya Salkind. The good news about this latest re-release is that we will likely see the long anticipated "Donner cut" of Superman II. The article provides some background on what happened:

The Salkinds originally retained Donner to direct "Superman" and "Superman II" simultaneously. Budget over-runs and personality conflicts eventually led the Producers to replace Donner with Lester..... [who] joined the "Superman" production as an uncredited producer and intermediary. "Lester contributed two gigantic ideas," Salkind explained. "Drop the second part because we had missed summer [19]78 and take the end of the second part for the first part." This permitted Donner to finish the first film without worrying about filming for the second, with the rationale being that, if the first film bombed, there'd be no reason to have a second film ready to go. After the first film's release, work resumed on the sequel with Lester in the director's chair.
The original idea was to end the first film with a cliffhanger - the first of the two nuclear rockets that Superman threw into outer space explodes and frees the three Phantom Zone villains. After the Salkinds decided to hold off finishing "Superman II" till after the first film's release, it was decided that it made more creative sense to present the sequel's story independently of the first film. This necessitated plotting changes such as the addition of the scene where terrorists attempt to hold Paris hostage, which results in the freeing of the Phantom Zone baddies, and the deletion of scenes that referred to events from the first film as being recent.

I feel vindicated. I bought the new Superman DVD, but held off on buying Superman II because I knew that someday that they would release this alternate verson, probably around the time of the new movie. My patience has paid off. I still won't buy Superman III or IV or Supergirl though.