If there’s one film on the 2025 movie schedule that will have a lot of eyes on it this year, it has to be James Gunn’s Superman. A Superman movie is always a potential blockbuster, but with the movie being the big-screen debut of an entirely new superhero movie universe, there’s a lot riding on the upcoming DC movie.
The good news is that so far, it sounds like Warner Bros. thinks Superman and the broader DC Universe, are all on the right track. WB Co-studio heads Pam Adby and Mike De Luca recently appeared on the Smartless podcast, and De Luca revealed they had seen an early cut of the movie, and he praised not only the movie but the direction of the franchise being led by James Gunn and Peter Safran. He said…
We’ve seen an early cut of Superman, and I don’t want to bury the lede, there’s a lot of marketing about to roll out on the way to its release, but [James Gunn] really understood the assignment, his heart’s in the right place, his aim is true, and we’re really excited about their new version of DC.
Superman trailer has shown that it will also introduce a host of other DC characters. How all the various projects in James Gunn’s first chapter of the DCU, called Gods & Monsters, will connect together, if at all, is still very much an open question, but whatever the strategy here is, WB seems to be on board.
In most cases, statements like this would be nothing but good news for fans looking forward to the new movie. A studio coming out and saying, two months before the movie is released, that everybody involved “understood the assignment” is a pretty ringing endorsement. Of course, Superman is no ordinary movie.
The fact that we’re even getting a new DC Universe is a net negative for fans who enjoyed the last one. There’s already been a lot of criticism of the new DC Universe from those who didn’t want to see it change, even though the only part of it we’ve actually seen is the Creature Commandoes animated series. Exactly what the “assignment” was here is a big question for those fans who have thus far been critical of what we’ve seen of Superman.
Based on the fact that Mike De Luca didn’t want to say too much ahead of the upcoming marketing indicates that the next few weeks leading into Superman’s release will have a lot to reveal. It’s certainly going to be an exciting couple of months.