Superman: Red Son Is DC Animation’s Next Adaptation

An animated movie based on the Elseworlds tale Superman: Red Son is on the way. It was announced at San Diego Comic-Con and Warner Bros. is developing a feature for a 2020 home release.

DC broke the news during the world premiere of Batman: HUSH at SDCC. Red Son will kick off an entire slate of DC Animated features scheduled for next year. These include Superman: Man of Tomorrow, which is an original story, and Justice League Dark: Apokolips War — a sequel to the 2017 release Justice League Dark.

Superman: Red Son is a three-part storyline first published in 2003. Written by Mark Millar and the winner of an Eisner Award, it explores the idea of Kal-El’s craft landing in the Soviet Union as opposed to Kansas. He ends up being raised in the USSR during the height of the Cold War and the plot spans his life in an alternate reality from 1953 to 2001.

Loosely adapted before for an episode of Supergirl involving a Kaznian-trained clone, the movie will correspond more closely with the graphic novel. Full details and a voice cast have not been revealed.

Aside from the features, Warner is also producing DC Showcase shorts featuring  Sgt. Rock, Adam Strange, Death, and The Phantom Stranger (a figure who made his presence known the past few weeks on DC Universe’s Swamp Thing).

Batman won’t get a feature next year but “Death in the Family” will be turned into a Showcase short. There is The Long Halloween animated movie to look forward to as well.

DC has a rich three-decade-long tradition of quality animated adaptations of some of their best storytelling that’s part of a larger universe continuity. Of that, the publisher had this to say on their news page:

“The DC Universe Movies are a long-running, critically acclaimed series of animated films featuring the heroes and villains of DC that generally target more sophisticated and mature superhero fans. Boasting a mix of comic book adaptations and original stories, they’ve proven to be an enduring success with DC readers, who year-after-year attend the movies’ World Premiere screenings at conventions like Comic-Con and WonderCon and engage in watchalongs of earlier movies on the DC Universe digital service.”

Excited for a Red Son movie? Let us know in the comments.

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