If there’s one thing that we can say about James Gunn’s Superman movie with certainty, it’s that there are going to be a lot of rumors surrounding it between now and Superman release date next July. If there's another thing we can say for certain, James Gunn is going to be debunking a lot of those rumors. That’s going to likely mean a lot of work for the filmmaker, who seems to spend a ton of his time debunking rumors about his films. And he’s back at it, trying to set the record straight regarding just what his movie is about, and who it is about.
A recent rumor regarding the new Man of Steel movie indicated that star David Cornswet would be doing double duty, playing both Superman and Ultraman. In the comics, Ultraman is an evil version of Supes from another universe, but the rumor here was that Lex Luthor would clone Superman, creating the doppelganger. More importantly, the battle between the two Superman was supposed to be the main focus of the film. James Gunn took to Threads to seemingly debunk this rumor, saying…
The primary protagonist of Superman is, shockingly, Superman. The main villain of Superman is, shockingly, Lex Luthor. I don’t know where all the stuff is coming from that it’s something other than this. There are so many stories coming out every day it’s difficult to deal with and everytime I strike something down I’m giving it attention. So, I’ll say again, don’t believe anything unless you see it HERE (& why would you want to know everything before the movie comes out anyway?)
This is certainly good news for myself and other DC fans who were concerned about the recent Superman rumor. The idea just didn’t make a lot of sense. While we know that James Gunn’s Superman won’t be an origin story for the character, we would still expect that the first movie (not only in the new Superman series but the first movie of the new DCU Chapter 1 )would focus on the core parts of the key characters. Namely Superman and his iconic antagonist, Lex Luthor.
It should be pointed out that, strictly speaking, Gunn doesn’t say that Ultraman won’t be in the new Superman movie at all, simply that he’s not the main villain of the film. It’s possible Ultraman, or some other Superman clone or multiverse version of the character, could still feature in the story, just in a way that still allows Luthor to be the focus and Ultraman simply an element supporting Luthor.
We know that the first of the upcoming DC movies to tell the stories of Gunn’s DCU is doing a lot. The movie is set to include many other major DC heroes and villains, so a clone Superman wouldn’t be out of place. As long as the core battle is between Superman and Lex Luthor, the franchise should be getting off to a good start.
