‘Man Of Steel’ Writer David Goyer Reveals His Initial Reaction To Warner Bros.’ Desperate Plans For A DC Cinematic Universe: “Let’s Not Run Before We Walk”

JB Augustine |

Sep 26, 2023

Superman (Henry Cavill) waits for the arrival of General Zod (Michael Shannon) in Man of Steel (2013), Warner Bros. Pictures

Man of Steel almost had a sequel, but it led to Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice instead and launched the shared DC Extended Universe. The rest was history and a lesson in chaos. Everything happened so quickly that it was fairly obvious Warner Bros. was trying to catch up with Marvel minus a substantial plan.

The writer of MOS, David Goyer, recently explained on the Happy Sad Confused podcast with Josh Horowitz, via Variety, that the average person outside his bubble didn’t know the half of it. “I know the pressure we were getting from Warner Bros., which was, ‘We need our MCU! We need our MCU!’ And I was like let’s not run before we walk,” Goyer said.

That’s sound advice, but whoever was in charge wasn’t around long enough to take it. “The other thing that was difficult at the time was there was this revolving door of executives at Warner Bros. and DC. Every 18 months someone new would come in. We were just getting whiplash,” he added. “Every new person was like, ‘We’re going to go bigger!’”

Goyer continued, “I remember at one point the person running Warner Bros. at the time had this release that pitched the next 20 movies over the next 10 years. But none of them had been written yet! It was crazy how much architecture was being built on air…this is not how you build a house.”

The house managed to stand for a decade through several regimes and creative forces building and shingling it in their image. That process started with Joss Whedon and Justice League, and it continued as WB wavered between a soft reboot and letting Zack Snyder complete his trilogy. It wouldn’t come to an end until this past year when James Gunn declared a restart.

Man of Steel 2 was in development on and off during the whole fiasco, and Gunn stepped in with his vision and a recasting just as the sequel seemed to have a chance. It’s too late now for Henry Cavill because of that, but Goyer agrees with Horowitz that they should have simply gone ahead with part 2.

And that wouldn’t have been a bad idea based on what Cosmic Book News says. The site’s intel claims MOS2 would have led to an extended universe anyway as films were proposed — including Green Lantern 2 — with the intention of building to a Justice League adventure. Batman, though, was to remain a separate franchise much like now under Matt Reeves’ guidance.

In an even odder twist, the actor favored to play the big screen’s next Batman and take over for Christian Bale was Tyler Hoechlin. Before he was cast as Superman on TV, Hoechlin was noteworthy for his work on MTV’s Teen Wolf.

NEXT: Veteran DCEU Storyboard Artist Jay Oliva Provides New Details About Ben Affleck’s Planned Batman Story, Describes Planned Film As “F***ing Awesome”