David Corenswet's Man of Tomorrow being compared to Henry Cavill's Man of Steel was inevitable. Unsurprisingly, social media has been blowing up about exactly that since the first Superman trailer was released earlier this week.
While there will always be fans who want to pit the DCU against the DCEU (or "SnyderVerse"), James Gunn and Zack Snyder don't appear to have an issue. In fact, the Superman helmer turned to the Man of Steel and Justice League director for some very specific advice about the hero's costume.
"There was a time when I was developing the Superman costume, with David Corenswet and Juliana [Makovsky], our costume designer and it was coming together, but it had the red trunks, it had the whole thing," Gunn recalled in an interview with Screen Brief. "And we really went back and forth a lot about the red trunks."
"I even talked to Zack Snyder about it. He said, 'I tried like a billion versions with the trunks and just never got there.' And I said, 'I see how that’s the case,'" the filmmaker continued. "I didn’t know about the trunks. I wanted to use the trunks, but I couldn’t, I kept taking them off. And I came in, it’s very colorful, the trunks are on, and I’m like, 'God, I don’t know. It’s just so colorful. David, how do you feel?’ He’s like, ‘I love it.’ And I’m like, 'Really, it’s that colorful.'"
"And David said, ‘I’m an alien from outer space who can fly and lift buildings, and I shoot laser beams out of my eyes that can dissolve things. I want kids to not be afraid of me. So, what am I going to wear? And I think that was really part of where the costume came from. And I saw the character in a new way," Gunn admitted.
Most expected Superman to skip the trunks given how challenging they are to get right on screen. Since 2011's "The New 52" DC Comics relaunch, that part of the hero's costume was ditched in both the DCEU and Arrowverse, so the fact this reboot embraces them is sure to be welcomed by longtime comic book fans.
Elsewhere in the conversation, Gunn was asked whether there was ever a "kill your darlings" moment for Superman (in other words, something he had to sacrifice from the movie for one reason or another he may not have wanted to).
"When it comes cutting stuff, I don’t I don’t have emotions over those things. I’ve been doing this for 30 years. I don’t have many emotions about killing my darlings," he confessed. "But at one point, I had a very different ending that I wrote to the Superman script that I went in and I told my wife about. I had written the first draft, and asked her, ‘And then what if this happens?’"
"And it was very different, and maybe I’ll be able to share that someday," Gunn teased. "That was hard. I had a pretty cool ending that was a little bit different than the ending we get - actually, a lot different."
Superman, DC Studios' first feature film to hit the big screen, is set to soar into theaters worldwide this summer from Warner Bros. Pictures. In his signature style, James Gunn takes on the original superhero in the newly imagined DC universe with a singular blend of epic action, humor and heart, delivering a Superman who’s driven by compassion and an inherent belief in the goodness of humankind.
Superman arrives in theaters on July 11, 2025.