IT WILL go down like a dose of kryptonite at the Daily Planet but a British actor is being sought to don the famous blue tights in a film revival of America’s greatest superhero.

The makers of a £100 million film of Superman have rejected Hollywood’s leading men and turned to Britain in the search for an unknown actor to play one of the great American icons. Casting agents working on the blockbuster The Death of Superman, the first project in a new three-film franchise, have auditioned 40 British drama students and young actors in recent weeks in the hunt for the new Man of Steel.

The decision to cast an unknown dashes the hopes of some of Hollywood’s biggest stars, including Keanu Reeves, Josh Hartnett, Ben Affleck and Nicolas Cage. With less than four months before filming is scheduled at Pinewood Studios, Brett Ratner, the director, has abandoned plans to cast a high-profile star for fear of compromising the superhero’s own character. Instead, casting agents have been despatched to London, Sydney and New York to screen test aspiring young actors.

Students from drama schools including Guildhall, the London Academy of Dramatic Art and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art attended auditions behind closed doors in Soho this month. Such is the interest in the project that Jude Law’s agent contacted casting directors during the three-day auditions to remind them of his availability.

Ian Hart, the Liverpudlian actor who played Dr Watson in the BBC’s Hound of the Baskervilles film, is touting for the role. “I can see me in the tights and a cape,” he said. “That would be something else.” Christian Bale, the Welsh star of American Psycho, has also joined the auditions queue.The script for the new Warner Brothers film, which has taken almost a decade to reach production, has been the subject of much speculation among Superman fans keen to discover how it reinvents the myth.

In keeping with the original DC Comics, the new adaptation will see Superman fleeing his home planet, Krypton, as a child and coming to Earth. There he will meet his love interest, Lois Lane, at university rather than as aspiring journalists at the Daily Planet.

Playing on the topical issues of national security, Superman’s nemesis, Lex Luthor, is understood to be a former CIA agent turned rotten, and hellbent on the age-old quest of world domination.

The “death” of the film’s title is to be its centrepiece and climax — a scene where Lois plunges into a vat of boiling lead, which will destroy Superman if he attemts to save her. Needless to say, he does so, and must then be brought back to life with the help of his exiled father, Jor-El.

Twelve British screen tests are believed to have been taken to Los Angeles where Ratner, whose previous film hits include Rush Hour and Red Dragon, will make a final decision next month. Should any of the homegrown hopefuls succeed, they will join another Brit, Sir Anthony Hopkins, who has been signed up to follow Marlon Brando and play Superman’s father.

Ever since Superman last hit cinema screens in 1987, in the fourth film featuring Christopher Reeve, fans of the caped crusader have speculated on possible heirs to the role. In 1998, Nicolas Cage was named as the new Superman for a production titled Superman Reborn. The £100 million film was hampered by numerous problems, including industrial action in Hollywood and concerns from its makers about mounting antipathy among fans towards Cage. The project was eventually abandoned.

Jim Hambrick, who runs a Superman museum in Metropolis, Illinois, and the biggest fan website, said: “If an unknown Briton comes out as best for the role, that would not be a problem. Superman should be considered more of a worldly character.”

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