When Lois is kidnapped by a mad scientist, she is given a demonstration of his energy cannon as he attacks Metropolis. Only Superman can stop it in his first cinematic adventure. Max Fleischer and Dave Fleischer were reluctant to take this assignment because it would require much more realistic designs and animation than they usually used. They tried to discourage the studio by stating they would need a budget of around $100,000 per short, four times the budget of an average Walt Disney cartoon, which then had the highest budgets in animation). To their shock, Paramount executives agreed to the amount, which made the Superman series--in adjusted dollars--the biggest-budgeted animation series in film history.
