Report: Warner Bros. Making Progress On Next Superman Movie

John F. Trent |

Apr 29, 2022

Source: Superman Vol. 2 #53 "Truth, Justice, and the American Way" (1991), DC Comics. Cover art by Jerry Ordway

A new report claims that Warner Bros. and DC Films are making progress on their next Superman film albeit it’s unclear what that exactly means.

Collider Editor-in-Chief Steven Weintraub claims he spoke to Warner Bros. Pictures Chairman Toby Emmerich about the film at CinemaCon and informed him that “progress is being made.”

Weintraub tweeted, “If you know me you know how much I love Superman. So when I saw Warner Bros. Pictures Chairman Toby Emmerich tonight walked right up to him and asked about the next Superman movie.”

“Won’t say what he said to me since it might have been off the record. But progress is being made,” he concluded.

As noted above, Weintraub doesn’t provide any details on which Superman movie this is, he just simply notes it’s Warner Bros. Pictures next Superman film.

Warner Bros. has announced a number of Superman projects including a film being written by extremely radical leftist Ta-Nehisi Coates and produced by franchise-killer J.J. Abrams. The Hollywood Reporter detailed the film would feature a black actor playing Superman as well as it being directed by a black director.

The latest rumors about that film indicated it was in quicksand due to its alleged massive budget and the fact that Coates was injecting his radical social commentary into the film that scooper Mikey Sutton claimed the script is “not Superman enough” and “It’s not really resonating as a Superman project.”

He also detailed that a source told him, “He really doubts that this will go forward and I’m not saying it’s dead, but as of right now it’s in quicksand.”

Alleged script leaks appeared to prove Sutton’s claims true as it detailed Coates was using “Superman’s alien heritage as a parallel to racism” and DC Films and Warner Bros. were going to race swap Lois Lane and Perry White.

The other Superman project Warner Bros. announced was a limited TV series about Val-Zod, the Superman of Earth-2, coming out of Michael B. Jordan’s production company Outlier Society.

When the project was detailed by Collider in 2021, it was unclear whether Jordan would be playing Val-Zod.

Both of these projects might be up in the air with David Zaslav taking the helm of the new entity Warner Bros. Discovery. A recent report from The Hollywood Reporter claimed Zaslav and his team believe that DC Films and Warner Bros. were underutilizing Superman.

It specifically notes that Discovery believes “top-shelf characters such as Superman have been left to languish and need to be revitalized.”

So it’s quite possible that Zaslav and his team at Discovery come in, flush out these current Superman projects, and begin work on another one.

And it’s possible they might have already started on a completely different Superman project that aims to revitalize the character and bring him back to prominence.

What do you make of this update from Weintraub? What Superman project do you think Emmerich was referring to? What kind of Superman story would you want to see Warner Bros. Pictures and DC Films produce?

NEXT: Shazam! Director David Sandberg Reveals Why He Has No Interest In Helming A Superman Movie