New ‘Superman’ footage premieres at CinemaCon
Warner Bros. closed its CinemaCon presentation on Tuesday night with a lengthy conversation about James Gunn’s Superman. Gunn and cast members David Corenswet, Rachel Brosnahan, and Nicholas Hoult revealed their inspirations for the forthcoming blockbuster.
“It was a long time coming,” Gunn told theater owners about his decision to direct Superman. The Guardians of the Galaxy filmmaker said he was initially approached to reboot the iconic DC Comics character in 2018. However, he decided instead to make The Suicide Squad, a project more aligned with his off-kilter work in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
“Over the years, it was just a constant thought experiment in my mind,” Gunn added. “How would I do Superman if I ever had the chance to do it? How can you do it? Take a character like this, who's perceived as old-fashioned by many, and has so many different permutations of the character throughout the years. How can you do it for a modern audience? And then one day, I think it just hit me like a burst. What I wanted to do was create a story that was both utterly human and utterly fantastical at the same time.”
Little is known about the plot of Superman, and although Gunn and his cast spent more than 30 minutes discussing the project, the movie’s story remains a mystery. However, Brosnahan, an Emmy Award winner for The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel in her most significant film role, spoke at length about the opportunity to play a character as prominent in culture as Lois Lane.
“It feels like someone new with a very clear vision comes in and swings their lens on them. It's a little bit like theater that way,” she said of Gunn’s interpretation. “So we get to stand on the shoulders of giants, of these amazing actors who played these roles before us, and then find our own way into their heads with a road map. The script that James beautifully wrote. And you've lived with these characters for so much longer than we have, so it was hugely intimidating. But also, you know, these stories at their core are about the power of hope and what it means to be courageous and the fight for good to conquer evil, and the reminder that it's always something worth fighting for.”
Brosnahan said she spoke to journalists as part of her research for the role of Lois Lane, and Gunn praised the actress for her attention to detail regarding the character’s costume and apartment.
“One of the cool things about Rachel is that, like a lot of actors, you are really interested in what their outfits are,” Gunn said. “She's exactly the same way her apartment, and she worked really closely with the production designer to make sure all the stuff up in the apartment was something that she would put there as Lois and that she could live in was a reflection of who she was … she takes it so seriously, and it really shows up in the movie.”
Superman is expected to be a massive hit for Warner Bros., which has been experiencing a run of bad luck with box-office misses like Mickey 17 and The Alto Knights. Asked what he hopes the audience takes away from Superman, star Corenswet, who plays the Man of Steel, said it was rewatchability.
“I hope they want to see it again, and that's not just to sell more tickets,” he said. “But my favorite movies are the ones where you come to the end, the lights come up in the theater, and you think back to the beginning of the film, and you realize what a journey you went on over the last two hours. There were highs and lows, and there was heartbreak and loss, and there were times when you feared for the characters that you loved. However, in the end, there was triumph and hope and a sense of being able to take anything on. And so when you leave the theater, there's a feeling of, I just want to get back in line and ride that roller-coaster again.”
Before exiting the stage, Gunn introduced new footage from Superman, an extended sequence of Superman being saved by his dog, Krypto. The effects and production design of Superman’s Fortress of Solitude looked terrific, and John Powell’s score sounded appropriate to John Williams’s iconic Superman theme. If the movie hits with audiences and critics like it did with theater owners, who seemed rapt by the clips, perhaps Academy members will also want to look, up in the sky, come awards season.