I don't know about you, but I've been waiting for James Gunn's Superman movie for a long time – much longer than the two-and-a-half years or so since the film was officially announced.
For my money, there hasn't been a live action movie that's really done Superman justice since 1980's Superman II. I was disappointed with Man of Steel and actively disliked many of the films that followed in that continuity. (Snyder fans – it's alright to let this dissenting opinion slide! You don't have to write in!) And long before that I was perplexed by Superman Returns, and its slavish devotion to Richard Donner's 1978 film. Don't get me wrong, that original movie remains a classic, but making a sequel to it almost 30 years later was a baffling choice for a franchise that was supposedly also targeting a younger audience.
But here we are again, only this time with a movie that – from the trailers at least – looks and feels like the comics that it's inspired by, and which seems to be nodding towards Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely's peerless All-Star Superman in particular. As a comics reader first and foremost, that's thrilling to me.
A fresh start
To be clear, I haven't seen the film yet – I'm writing this the day before it's made widely available to the press. Still, there's no doubting the buzz generated by the film's trailers – the first of which Gunn says has been viewed more than 250 million times. The wider promotional campaign has been pretty epic too, with a statue of Superman placed on top of the Shard in London, and Gunn showing up for every interview, fan event, and bizarre Rick and Morty cameo thrown at him.
There's a reason for that beyond simply wanting to sell his new film. As a Superman fan, I want the new movie to succeed, but for Gunn, co-CEO Peter Safran, and DC Studios at large, the new movie needs to be a hit – and a significant one at that. After all, this is the much ballyhooed first film in the new DCU and a jumping on point for a studio that is clearly hoping that superhero fatigue is really just Marvel fatigue. If Superman stumbles at the box office then Gunn’s reported 10-year-plan for the studio will suddenly look very shaky indeed.
If it succeeds, however, then the sky's the limit…
The studio has already made some canny decisions, starting with the tough-but-necessary choice of ending the old DCEU and relaunching it as the new DCU universe.
That was a hard pill to swallow for some fans, but the diminishing financial returns for those films, alongside a general sense of audience apathy, was fairly undeniable. 2018's Aquaman was a massive hit for the studio, easily passing the $1 billion mark at the box office, but while Shazam did reasonable numbers, every DCEU theatrical release after that – eight movies in total, including Gunn's own The Suicide Squad – either under-performed or outright bombed. There were certainly extenuating circumstances that fed into DC's diminished box office power, not least a global pandemic, but clearly the brand needed to do something big and eye-catching to stand a chance of reigniting the interest of the general audience.
Hiring Gunn to head up the new slate was also a smart decision. He's a director with a genuine love for the comic book source material, a big picture view of what a connected cinematic universe could look like, and a few bona fide hits under his belt. Sure, The Suicide Squad may have floundered, but that was very much a c-list DC property in terms of name recognition, not to mention a movie with an R rating and one that was also released simultaneously on HBO Max. It had a lot stacked against it. Superman, as one of the most popular characters in all of fiction, seems like a far safer bet.
So what does Superman succeeding actually look like? According to anonymous DC insiders speaking to The Wrap, the film needs to gross at least $500 million to turn a profit. Given the amount of publicity the film is getting, along with the name recognition that comes with Superman, that seems eminently achievable.
For the film to truly be considered a hit, however, The Wrap's insiders suggest that the studio is hoping for a figure closer to $700 million. For context, the previous solo Superman movie, Man of Steel, took $670 million worldwide, while Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice started strong and pulled in an impressive $874 million before faltering in the following weeks.
Look up
Should the film tank then things won't look so good for DC's next two big screen projects, the already shot Supergirl movie from I, Tonya director Craig Gillespie, and James Watkin's upcoming Clayface – an unexpected movie with a comparatively unknown lead character.
For his part, however, Gunn seems unfazed by the pressure – and has denied that the film needs to do such enormous business, saying to GQ, "Is there something riding on it? Yeah, but it's not as big as people make it out to be... They hear these numbers that the movie's only going to be successful if it makes $700 million or something and it's just complete and utter nonsense. It doesn't need to be as big of a situation as people are saying."
Whatever the case, Superman as a character has endured for almost 90 years at this point, his popularity waxing and waning, but never truly diminishing. With the Dark Knight currently still in the hands of Matt Reeves (whose The Batman universe stands outside of mainstream DC continuity), Gunn's film is the studio's best hope for renewed box office success. If the film is good, and if enough people show up for it, then the Man of Steel will soar once more.
Superman is released in theaters on July 11. For more comic book movies, check out our guides to all the upcoming DC movies, and how to watch the DC movies in order, as well as our guide to the best Superman comics and how strong Superman is.
