2008 American parody film by Craig Mazin
Superhero Movie is a 2008 American parody film written and directed by Craig Mazin, produced by Robert K. Weiss and David Zucker, and starring Drake Bell, Sara Paxton, Christopher McDonald and Leslie Nielsen.
A spoof of the superhero film genre, primarily Sam Raimi's Spider-Man (2002) and Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins (2005), it also parodies other 2000s superhero films such as X-Men (2000) and Fantastic Four (2005). The film draws inspiration from the Scary Movie series, with which the film's poster shares a resemblance. It was also inspired by, and contains homages to some of Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker's earlier spoof films such as Airplane! (1980) and the Naked Gun trilogy (1988, 1991 and 1994 respectively). In the case of the former, the film was originally titled Superhero! as a nod to Airplane!, in which Nielsen also starred.
Production began on September 17, 2007, in Los Angeles. It was released by MGM Distribution Co. on March 28, 2008, in the United States to negative critical reviews, but grossed $73 million against a $35 million budget.
Plot summary adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.