A network exec has officially confirmed that The CW’s previously announced decision to permanently ground Superman & Lois after its fourth season was made in order to avoid its interpretation of Big Blue potentially diverting interest away from Jame Gunn’s upcoming Superman: Legacy.
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As previously reported, the order to put the last survivor of DC’s Arrowverse out to pasture was first handed down in November 2023 by The CW’s then brand-new owners, the NexStar Broadcasting group, in service of a massive cost cutting campaign aimed at making the network profitable for the first time in its entire existence.
And though the fan-favorite series was allowed one more season to conclude its narrative rather than being abruptly and suddenly cut, its fourth and final outing was given only a bare fraction of its normal budget to do so, thus requiring its production team to make cuts across every department, including its visual effects teams and writer’s room.
However, while NexStar’s desire to turn a profit on their investment was initially framed as the sole reason for Superman & Lois‘ cancellation, according to The CW President of Entertainment Brad Schwartz, it was actually brought to an end on the direct orders of Warner Bros. Discovery out of deference to their upcoming DC cinematic reboot plans.
Speaking to the network’s future under its new ownership during a February 2024 interview with The Wrap‘s Kayla Cobb and Jose Alejandro Bastidas, Schwartz said of The CW’s ongoing reshuffling, “The business we inherited lost a lot of money. Maybe it did very well for Warner Bros. and CBS, but the actual business itself lost money.
“That’s not anyone’s fault,” he added. “That was the model.”
Turning to the specific topic of the four shows which The CW has committed to continuing following its purchase by NexStar – All American, All American: Homecoming, Walker, and, of course, Superman & Lois – Schwartz explained, “We went to our partners at CBS and Warner Bros., and we just were like, ‘We’re partners on these things, you sell them randomly around. Here’s our economics…’ We can’t keep losing the amount of money we were on the shows.”
Following this meeting, said the network exec, “Very collaboratively, everyone got together and we pushed these four shows forward.”
Unfortunately for fans, it seems this declaration was not a glimmer of hope but merely a slip of the tongue, as upon realizing he had included Superman & Lois in his ‘potential ongoing production slate’, Schwartz clarified that despite its continued success in the ratings, Warner Bros. Discovery had made it clear that “They don’t want a competing Superman product in the marketplace” when Superman: Legacy hits theaters next year.
While this reasoning comes across as both ironic and exceedingly thin-skinned on Gunn’s part given the fact that this is the same studio that has not only regularly embraced the multiverse but is still actively developing a ‘separate-from-all-universes’ Joker continuity, whether or not this torpedoing of one of the best live-action interpretations of Big Blue put to screen in years benefits or harms the new DCEU’s box office prospects remains to be seen when Superman: Legacy hits theaters on July 11th, 2025.
Meanwhile, Superman & Lois‘ final season is currently in production.