James Gunn addresses some wild stories going around about why Henry Cavill is no longer playing Superman.
Nathan Fillon recently spoke to Collider about his casting as Guy Gardner and talked about the chat he had with Gunn. This caused some confusion among fans about the director’s plans for ‘Superman.’ Gunn said on Threads that this chat actually happened much later, and he always wanted to tell a new Superman story — so there was no reason to hide anything:
“I don’t quite understand how that fits. Aside from the fact I had no interest in running DC until Peter decided to do it with me so he could do the exec stuff & I could focus on creative when I was hired to write Superman, it was always intended as & pitched as a new Superman story. So why would I lie about not planning that at the Squad premiere which would have amounted to the same thing at the end of the day? How does this particular conspiracy theory make sense?”
Fans Thought Gunn Had Secret Plans
Here’s what happened: Gunn was busy with ‘The Suicide Squad’ in 2021. Some thought he was secretly planning to take over DC Studios and change Superman into a new story he had in mind. However, Gunn didn’t even start running DC Studios with his partner Peter Safran until December 2022. This was long after ‘The Suicide Squad’ came out.
Nathan Fillion said that Gunn talked about future movie roles at a party in 2021:
“We were actually at the premiere party after ‘Suicide Squad’ and he [James Gunn] was in a huge crowd of people. We saw each other in the crowd, and I congratulated him, ‘Oh, my God, that was amazing. It’s so great.’ He goes, ‘Hey, did Peter [Safran] tell you what we’ve got for you next?’ I said, ‘No, he hasn’t said.’ He looked around like someone was gonna be listening. We were in a throng of people, but he leaned over and said, ‘You’re gonna be Guy Gardner.'”
This made fans think Gunn was already planning big changes for Superman back then.
Things got more interesting in fall 2022 as Cavill showed up as Superman again in ‘Black Adam.’ He even posted on social media on October 24, 2022, and told everyone he was back as Superman. This comeback was sadly cut short. It was announced that Gunn and Safran were the new bosses at DC Studios, and they wanted to start with a new actor to play Superman.
David Corenswet will now be Superman in Gunn’s movie. The film is set to come out on July 11, 2025.
