Superman | James Gunn showcases footage as rumours swirl

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Director James Gunn has been showing off footage from Superman, due this summer, as rumours continue about the movie.

Ahead of its release in July, DC Studios’ Superman is in a difficult position. Not only is it seeking to finally step out of the long shadow cast by the late, great Christopher Reeve, but it’s also the first movie in a new planned cinematic universe from James Gunn and Peter Safran. There’s a solid argument that 2013’s Man Of Steel didn’t set the right template for Zack Snyder’s Snyderverse, and therefore every film that sought to build on that was similarly compromised.

If that’s not enough pressure, reports have flown around of late suggesting that after a rough year or so at the box office, Warner Bros may even be banking the company’s filmmaking future on the fortunes of Superman. While we fully accept that might be speculation masquerading as ‘valid sources’, it still paints a picture of a film under pressure to succeed.

Enter James Gunn, whose take on the Last Son of Krypton looks to lean slightly into the kind of trademark wackiness that the filmmaker enjoys, as do audiences. After all, this is the guy who made a talking tree and a mercenary raccoon part of the cultural lexicon.

Superman's first trailer had some fans – even in our own comments section – voicing concerns that an appearance from Krypto the Wonder Dog was taking ol’ Supes in a direction which was just too out-there, even while others (such as this one) are excited that we’re finally going to see this Grant Morrison-style take on the character appear on the big screen.

In a move clearly designed to win over those who are on the fence about the film’s tone, Gunn has used this week’s CinemaCon expo to release an extended five minute sneak peek of the film, focusing on Superman and his loyal canine sidekick, not to mention introducing another element of the Superman mythos that we’ve never seen appear on a cinema screen before.

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Per Deadline, Gunn revealed on stage that, in 2018, he opted to make The Suicide Squad rather than a Superman film for DC, adding that he took “the easy way” but that “it stuck with me and it was a constant thought experiment in my mind. How can you take a character like that, perceived as old-fashioned by many […] how can you do it for a modern audience? And one day it suddenly hit me in a burst, and I wanted to do a story that was utterly human, utterly fantastic,” the director and DC co-chief said.

“This is a movie that celebrates kindness and human love,” added Gunn. “I want people to have that magical feeling when they come out of the movie and they love the person they came with a little more than when they went in.”

A take on the Man Of Steel that brings the world together sounds a reasonable bet to us, and we also like the fact that Gunn cheekily dropped the footage right before Marvel was about to hit the stage to present Thunderbolts*.

That kind of playfulness has been missing from the character for far too long, so let’s hope that this film brings that back and we get what Gunn is billing as ‘The Summer of Superman.’

Superman releases in cinemas on July 11th. Here’s the sneak peek below.