Upcoming superhero film features David Corenswet as the titular superhero, with Rachel Brosnahan as Lois Lane and Nicholas Hoult as Lex Luthor
BURBANK, Calif. — In the opening frames of the brand-new trailer for Superman, we see titular star David Corenswet beaten up and at his most vulnerable point.
Battered and bleeding, barely able to whistle for his “Super-Dog” Krypto to come rescue him, this latest cinematic version of the iconic DC Comics character will show Superman fighting to his very last breath to ensure that he gets to live in a world where hope and love have the final say.
The first poster for the film already hinted at this more optimistic take when it was released earlier this week with the slogan: “Look up.” But every brightly lit frame of writer-director James Gunn’s upcoming superhero epic will be filled with optimism.
“The truth for me is, I didn’t come in here to write a Superman movie and say, ‘I’m going to honour this and honour that and be open to fans,’” Gunn said during a press event on the Warner Bros. studio lot Monday afternoon. “I wanted to tell a story that excited me and moved me and felt authentic. I wanted to have a Superman who stayed true to his origins of being the ultimate good guy. This is a movie about kindness. It’s a movie about being good.”
Gunn, who was the mastermind behind Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy films, was hired in 2022 to revamp DC’s superhero slate with a new series of interconnected films, television shows, comic books and video games. His Superman reboot, which opens in theatres on July 11, 2025, follows Corenswet’s Clark Kent/Superman in a new adventure that skips his origin story altogether.
By the time we meet the last son of the planet Krypton, he’ll have already been wearing the Superman cape for quite some time while secretly working as a reporter at the Daily Planet.
Gunn told reporters that he opened the teaser with Krypto coming to his master’s aid because he wanted to show “a bit of a different side of Superman than what we’ve seen normally onscreen.”
“This movie is not about power. This movie is about, in a loose term of the word, a human being and who he is as a person struggling with his day-to-day life,” Gunn said. “We see a different aspect of that in the (film’s) beginning and so I thought it was a cool place to start the trailer and the movie.”
Gunn said Superman’s relationship with Krypto is going to be complicated. “He’s not nearly the best dog. There’s a lot more to Krypto than what you see in this trailer,” he said, laughing. “But I also thought (including Krypto) was a way to say we’re embracing all of the Superman mythology. Superhero movies have a way of taking these characters and saying. ‘OK, it’s Superman, but it’s not any of the other stuff’ … In our (version), Superman lives in a world with other superheroes. This is an alternative-history, fantasy world where superheroes exist, but it’s also incredibly grounded. These are real people with real lives that just happen to be meta-humans … Superman’s got a flying dog and a giant fortress that springs from the ground. He fights giant monsters.”
The film, he continued, will incorporate a lot of the things we love from the Superman comics and the Superman mythology that we haven’t been able to see as much of in films.
Emmy-winning Marvelous Mrs. Maisel actress Brosnahan says that the relationship between Clark and Lois will honour their storied history as “soulmates.”
“They’re united in the fact that they are both in relentless pursuit of truth and justice,” she said. Brosnahan added she has loved all iterations of Lois. “One of the things I love about this character is she evolves to fit what it means to be an intrepid journalist of each decade she’s presented in. Today we’re living in a world where print journalism, to some, is perhaps an endangered artform and she is someone who has dedicated her entire life to it,” she said.
Corenswet’s interpretation of Superman is one that was described as “radically present.”
The actor, who appeared in Ryan Murphy’s Hollywood as well as last summer’s Twisters, said always being “cut out of the drama in school” helped him tap into Superman.
“I never felt like I knew the exciting, juicy gossip that was going on in school,” he said. “No one cared to update me about it … For that reason, I always saw people as the best versions of themselves. I don’t think it was in a terribly naive way … I know some people consider Superman to be a naive character, but I think it’s really just a blindness to the little imperfections and silly little things we get caught up with as people. I tend to miss those, and I think Superman misses those. That’s what keeps him looking at the good (in people).”
But Corenswet said playing Superman wasn’t glamorous. The suit, he joked, looks a lot cooler than it felt during a sweltering summertime shoot in Cleveland earlier this year.
“The thing that caught me off guard … was when other people saw me in the suit,” he recalled. “I walked on set and I got to see other people see Superman. It was amazing to watch my castmates and crew members (react) … Then the best thing was seeing how kids saw it … There’s nothing like it.”
The storyline is still a heavily guarded secret. In the two-and-a-half minute trailer, the only words we hear are when a near-death Superman whistles and calls Krypto’s name and mutters the word “home.”
Hoult, who admitted he was “in awe” the first time he saw Corenswet in his superhero garb, said the best part of getting a chance to interpret Lex Luthor, who has been played in past films by Gene Hackman, Kevin Spacey and Jesse Eisenberg, was getting a chance to see the character through the lens of Gunn’s writing.
“With this Lex, obviously he’s smart and ruthless, and he has to outmanoeuvre Superman on certain levels because he can’t match him in others. But there’s something about this character, from my standpoint, where you can understand on some levels where he’s coming from and why what he’s pushing as his ideology might be better for humanity,” he said.
“It was so frigging colourful and brought back the underwear,” Gunn remembered as his first reaction. “But (Corenswet) said, ‘Yeah. He’s an alien from outer space who’s super powerful, who doesn’t want children to be afraid of him.’ That touched me in the moment, and it touches me now as I say it. That is who he is. That’s where the costume comes from and that goes along with (creators) Jerry (Siegel) and Joe (Shuster’s) original vision. He has a reason for why his costume is so colourful.”
British composer John Murphy also updates John Williams’ legendary theme song with an added electric twist. “I wanted to do our own version of the Williams’ theme … that leads into a lot of other (musical) pieces,” Gunn said.
Speaking to journalists in Los Angeles this week, Corenswet joked that this is his first project where he’s had to worry about spoilers. But he did say that this version of Clark/Superman will show the character figuring out who he can trust and who he can’t.
“The whole point of having a secret identity is that it’s at risk in the film. He’s early in his career at the Daily Planet. He’s established, but he’s no Lois Lane. He’s trying to make a name for himself as a reporter and he’s trying to fit in with the other exceptional journalists at the Planet,” he said.
Gunn also opened up on the initial casting process and how he landed on Corenswet.
The thing Gunn was most worried about was casting the newest face of the classical DC superhero, who has been played onscreen by Cavill, Kirk Alyn, George Reeves, Christopher Reeve, Brandon Routh and Tom Welling. But after the first day, of sifting through the many audition tapes that had landed on his desk, Gunn recalled thinking of Corenswet that he was “pretty good.”
“When we saw him. we said, ‘Oh my God, he’s got such a Superman face!’ The thing that connects him so much to Christopher Reeve is he has a lot of deep training. I’ve never worked with such a rigorous actor. He challenged me on a daily basis to get the most out of his character and get the most out of his story. Everything he does in the movie is utterly true … He’s always completely present,” Gunn said.
But he was also able to display a kind of inherent goodness from the comics that Gunn is hoping translates to the big screen.
“At the end of the day, the world doesn’t always seem to have so much good in it and this movie has to truly be that,” he said.
Superman hits theatres on July 11, 2025.