Produced by Guardians of the Galaxy and SUPERMAN director James Gunn, Brightburn caught everyone's attention with its Man of Steel-inspired teaser trailers and brought something new to the superhero genre by delivering a horror movie that essentially asked, "What if Superman was evil?"
The movie was a moderate success, earning just shy of $33 million on a reported $6+ million budget. Those aren't the sort of numbers which necessarily guarantee a sequel, but we learned last October that The H Collective/H3 Entertainment was moving forward with a follow-up.
At the time, we learned that the production company "intends to incorporate new technology into the production process of projects it has in development, including a sequel to horror movie Brightburn." That was reportedly set to include the Metaverse, Web3, and...artificial intelligence. Needless to say, the response to the latter being utilised wasn't good.
Now, though, it appears Brightburn sequel plans have been scrapped.
Responding to a fan on Threads who asked what the deal is with Brightburn 2, Gunn said, "I mean we talked about it early on. But the rights are all f*cked up (I only own half) so it’s unlikely that it will ever happen."
Presumably, The H Collective/H3 Entertainment owns the other half, though we'd imagine the SUPERMAN helmer has the power to step in and stop them from expanding the franchise with another movie.
When we spoke to Brightburn director David Yarovesky about what he'd like to see in a follow-up back in 2019, he told us, "I have a very canned answer for you on that front and by the nature of the answer I'm going to give you, telling you that it's canned is even more important."
"When we released Brightburn and when we exposed what we'd been working on to the world, it caught everyone off guard and people had that huge reaction to the trailer. I would say that if we were so fortunate to be able to make a sequel, I would like to repeat that and not tell anyone what we're working on and then surprise everyone with some crazy things that no one sees coming."
Brightburn boasted an inventive concept and successfully borrowed ideas from the superhero and horror genres. Ultimately, there isn't a huge need for a sequel, and even if Gunn was keen to continue the story, he's likely far too busy with his DC Studios commitments these days.
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