No superhero film is complete without merchandise, but with that comes the risk of spoilers. Toys have spoiled details of DC movies before and despite the new frontier James Gunn is exploring, the trend doesn’t appear to be changing.
A list of figures inspired by the 2025 film Superman directed by Gunn and from McFarlane Toys leaked online, causing many to believe they’ve stumbled upon top-secret plot details.
The speculation is going wild, but the biggest, most gigantic, conclusion fans are coming to is Gunn will yet again have a kaiju up in the action – much like Starro was in The Suicide Squad when he went on a rampage in Corto Maltese.
A copy of listings shared by veteran scooper Daniel Richtman mentions a kaiju a few times with one mention showing up next to a noteworthy villain. At the top is a listing for “LEX LUTHOR WITH BABY KAIJU” and closer to the bottom is a listing for a baby kaiju vinyl figure.
However, kaijus aren’t very threatening in a juvenile or miniature form. They have to be big monsters to do any substantial damage, and unfortunately for The Man of Steel, the baby kaiju may grow up. Further down from Lex is a listing for a kaiju mega figure, which can only mean one thing if it is credible.
Similar to a leaked listing for a Sabbac megafig inspired by the climax of Black Adam, the main reason to have a kaiju in your action film – which one would think has to be colossal – is so the hero can fight it. As such, many are anticipating a slugfest between Superman and a giant monster.
This should not be considered unprecedented for Big Blue; in fact, it’s a long time coming for him cinematically. Producer Jon Peters wanted him to fight a giant spider in Superman Lives. This battle was realized with CGI in a sequence in The Flash no one told Nicolas Cage about, and that most would rather forget about.
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Years later, Superman would do battle with a kaiju-sized Parasite in Superman: Man of Tomorrow to kick off the DCAU’s Tomorrowverse. Then on the page, he unwisely squared off against Godzilla and literally got cooked. That was The King of the Monsters though, not some random creature of unknown origin.
We don’t know its origins at this stage, assuming there unequivocally will be a kaiju in the next Superman movie, but there’s a guess, based on the proximity in the listing, that Lex is responsible for its creation. That theory indicates Luthor is the ultimate foe of the piece as he was when Gene Hackman played opposite Christopher Reeve.
Gunn stated on Threads earlier this year that Lex is the primary antagonist. Moreover, I posit he is going for that Hackman/Reeve dynamic, and the proof is how much of a big deal DC Studios made the acquisition and release of Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story.
Gunn, and by extension, David Zaslav want us to think of Reeve‘s Superman when we ponder what to expect from David Corenswet even if his portrayal is nothing close to his more famous predecessor.
