UPDATE: Warner Bros. has denied that Michael Bay was in talks to helm Man of Steel 2. The Wrap has also updated its original story to note, "A spokesperson for WB denies this claim."
Earlier today, we shared some insights into exactly how much is riding on the success of Superman this summer. There was a time when the DCEU was going to continue, though, and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson hoped the franchise would revolve around Black Adam.
That was a critical and commercial flop, but a post-credits scene finally welcomed Henry Cavill's Superman back into the fold. The actor shot a cameo for The Flash, but that was cut when Warner Bros. Discovery boss David Zaslav hired James Gunn and Peter Safran to run DC Studios.
The DCEU was rebooted as the DC, and Cavill was dropped. Now, David Corenswet will play a new version of the iconic Kryptonian in Gunn's Superman reboot. The decision to start over meant that early Man of Steel 2 plans were scrapped, and many of you might feel that was for the best based on this news.
According to The Wrap, "Before Gunn and Safran's hiring, Warner Bros. Pictures chiefs Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy briefly tried to get a standalone Henry Cavill-led 'Superman' film going in 2022, with Michael Bay eyed to possibly direct, according to two insiders."
Bay is best known for bringing his unique brand of "Bayhem" to five live-action Transformers movies. He also counts the likes of Bad Boys, Armageddon, Pearl Harbor, and 6 Underground among his directing credits.
Bay wasn't the only filmmaker Warner Bros. considered for a Man of Steel sequel. Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning director Christopher McQuarrie hoped to reunite with Cavill after they worked on Mission: Impossible - Fallout together.
"I will tell you, the first 5 minutes of my Superman movie was...you remember Pixar's Up? [It was] a sequence with no dialogue that covered that character," the filmmaker revealed in a recent interview.
"[It] was a set-up, after which you knew exactly what makes Superman tick and exactly what Superman was most afraid of and why Superman made the choices he made," McQuarrie added. "It would have been epic. The scale of the movie would have been absolutely extraordinary."
"I'll never tell. I'll never tell, but boy was it f***ing good. It was f***ing good."
For what it's worth, Bay has never seemed overly interested in superhero fare, so it seems doubtful he'd have wanted to direct a Superman movie. The same year he was considered for this gig, he said, "It's not that I'm not interested in Marvel. As Ridley Scott says, the most complicated thing for a director and the most fun thing for a director is to build the world."
"I'm not the guy to go into Lucas' Star Wars and do Star Wars Five. That's not me. I'm not the one to come into Iron Man Seven. I'm not the one to do Batman 10. I want to do my own thing," Bay noted. "I would love to do a superhero thing but I want to do it on my own terms and create my own world."
Still, we're sure you'll agree that it's fascinating (and perhaps a little frightening) to imagine what Man of Steel 2, by way of Michael Bay, might have looked like had it become a reality.