Tom Welling and Michael Rosenbaum announced plans to bring back ‘Smallville’ as an animated series several years ago. Welling recently mentioned that they already had an artist and a poster ready for it but need approval from Warner Bros. to move ahead.
“We haven’t been able to share it yet, but Lionel Luthor is looming over everybody, and it’s really cool, but we just can’t do anything without DC saying we can do it,” he said at the Terrificon in Connecticut last weekend. “They just haven’t given us a green light, but we’re ready, and Al [Gough] and Miles [Millar], who wrote ‘Smallville’, want to write it, but it’s not our property, until they say we can do it.”
The project waits for greenlight from James Gunn and DC Studios while Welling admits that it seems unlikely to be a financial success if sees release.
“It would be more of a labor of love,” the actor shared. “It’s not going to make a billion dollars, so the studio is kind of like [grumbles]. Maybe we can do a – not a GoFundMe, because that’s financial – but like a petition. We can petition Warner Bros. to let us do it.”
‘Smallville’ concluded in 2011 after 10 seasons. Tom Welling returned as Clark Kent for a short appearance in The CW’s ‘Crisis on Infinite Earths’ crossover in 2019 but the fact that his version of the hero gave up on his powers for his family upset the fans.
Welling teased a chance to change that plot point during the recent convention, “I don’t know if that’s actually the Clark from ‘Smallville’ because it’s a multiverse, so you never know. And I don’t know how he lost his powers. No one ever told me.”
The release date for the ‘Smallville’ animated show is currently unclear. If the project gets the go-ahead, the original cast is expected to return to voice their characters.
