You can watch the 2015 documentary The Death of “Superman Lives”: What Happens? to learn more the troubled production, but the idea that Superman Lives was considered for an animated movie begs the question of if other scrapped live action DC movies could receive that treatment, like George Miller’s Justice League: Mortal or Darren Aronofsky’s bizarre version of Batman: Year One.
Eventually Tim Burton (who had previously helmed Batman and Batman Returns) and Nicolas Cage departed the project, which the whole thing being scrapped by the end of 2000.
Entering into pre-production in mid-1997, Superman Lives was originally intended to begin principal photography in 1998, but due to scheduling delays and several script rewrites (which took the story further away from his comic book roots), Warner Bros decided to put the movie on hold three weeks before cameras started rolling.