Dawn of a New DC: Go Behind-the-Scenes of James Gunn’s “Superman”
Did you notice something in the sky on April 18? It wasn’t a bird or a plane, it was, of course, Superman, officially soaring for DC Studios to celebrate his special day. April 18 is Superman Day, in case you were unaware, and to that end, DC Studios gave us a sneak-peak behind-the-scenes of James Gunn’s upcoming Superman, the first feature film to fly out of the gate for the newly unified DC Studios, now run by Gunn and Peter Safran.
“Being a child, I loved the purity of Superman,” Gunn says in the new look, which gives us a glimpse of Christopher Reeve as the Man in Steel from Richard Donner’s excellent 1978 film Superman. “That was a time when I was starting to understand what movies were.”
“James didn’t know that Superman was in his future. He wasn’t sure that was the one that he should be doing,” said his DC Studios partner, Peter Safran. “And then he called me one day and said, ‘I have a way in. I know what I want to talk about.’”
Gunn goes on to say that he’s been trying to crack Superman for years. His patience was partly due, one imagines, to how well he had done in his career at centering his stories on misfits, goofballs, and antiheroes, creating memorable turns for off-kilter characters in his Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy for Marvel and The Suicide Squad for Warner Bros./DC Studios. Superman is decidedly not a misfit or an antihero (although his alter ego, Clark Kent, can be goofy, and in Zack Snyder’s films, Henry Cavill’s Superman could, at times, read as an antihero)…what Gunn needed was to find a way to make a film about a very good guy in a very broken world. A guy who happens to be an alien from Krypton with superpowers, of course.
“This character’s noble, and he’s beautiful,” Gunn says.
The film’s stars are, of course, on hand in the new video to discuss Gunn’s vision. Superman himself, David Corenswet, Rachel Brosnahan, who plays the plucky reporter Lois Lane (and who recently revealed hat Gunn’s vision for Superman picks up in media res, with Superman and Lois already in a relationship), and Nicholas Hoult, originally in the running to play Superman and who ended up nabbing the role of Lex Luthor.
Gunn has made it a point to say that when casting for the film, he didn’t just need a great new Superman and Lois, but two performers who had the chemistry to make their relationship work on screen. He found that with Corenswet and Brosnahan.
When I cast #Superman, I needed to cast Clark, I needed to cast Lois, but I also needed to cast that special onscreen chemistry between two actors that can’t be explained. That’s the thing @corenswet and Rachel Brosnahan brought to this movie together, and I can’t wait for you to… pic.twitter.com/LFtHcpS0fJ
— James Gunn (@JamesGunn) April 18, 2025
Superman soars into theaters on July 11. Check out the behind-the-scenes look here:
For more on Superman, check out these stories:
Rachel Brosnahan Talks “Superman”: It’s Not an Origin Story, But is it a Love Story?
5-Minute “Superman” Sneak Peek: Krypto Unleashed, Fortress Revealed, Robot Helpers in Action
James Gunn’s “Superman” Soars for Warner Bros. at CinemaCon
Featured image: Caption: DAVID CORENSWET as Superman in “SUPERMAN,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures
