2027

Yesterday James Gunn, David Corenswet, and Nicholas Hoult announced on social media the sequel to “Superman” titled “Man of Tomorrow”. Superman fans of the last decade will recognize the title as the speculated title for a “Man of Steel” sequel that never happened. It’s my personal favorite nickname for Superman too.

In a way, this announcement is more exciting than the 2023 “Superman: Legacy” announcement and maybe the most exciting Superman film project since 1987’s “Superman IV: The Quest for Peace”. Allow me to explain.

Over the last 35+ years Superman fans have come to take any new film announcements with a grain of salt. The franchise has famously had several high profile flame outs that resulted in no movies. Check out the list of aborted screenplays on Superman Homepage. The time period between “The Quest for Peace” and “Superman Returns” was rough.

We thought our long national nightmare was over when “Superman Returns” hit theaters, but when years went by with no sequel we fell back into the malaise. It was years of false starts and announcements that never panned out. Singer in, Singer out, Justice League movie, Michael Dougherty and Dan Harris out, 2007 writer’s strike, 2009 Routh out.

October 2010 it was announced that Zack Snyder would be directing a reboot of Superman. Cavill was cast early the next year with principal photography starting in August 2011. Finally we were back on track. It would be 7 years between movies, but Superman was going to be on the big screen again.

About a month after the release of “Man of Steel”, at San Diego Comic-Con, Zach Snyder got on stage to announce the sequel. “It’s official we are going to make another Superman movie”, he said. He then brought out Henry Lennix to read a line from a Batman story! Batman v. Superman was announced. I get it, the idea of Superman and Batman in a movie together was very exciting. The crowd went crazy. But Batman already? We get one Superman movie (that divided fans already) and we were jumping straight to Batman. Dark Knight Rises was only a year old at that point. It left me as a Superman fan a little cold. They were trying to replicate the success of the Dark Knight Trilogy with Superman. Snyder was more interested in Batman anyway.

By the time we got to the Justice League in 2017 Superman was dead in the movies. While we knew they were bringing him back, we also knew it would never be the Superman movie we wanted.

From there we went back into Superman limbo. The Phantom Zone if you will. The cameo in “Shazam!” 2019 was just a tease. The Snyder Cut didn’t improve things (one thing that can be said for the theatrical cut: it does Superman better).

Around this time there were reports of a Ta-Nehisi Coates written Superman film in development. As with the previous decades of announcements I took a “I’ll believe it when they are filming” attitude. I bet he would write an awesome Superman script though.

In early 2022 the “Peacemaker” show debuted and gave us a faceless Superman cameo like “Shazam!” At this point “League of Super Pets” was the best thing we could hope for.

Cavill’s cameo return in Black Adam got us excited again and his announcement fueled that fire. But again, don’t get your hopes up until they are rolling those cameras. The very next day Gunn and Safran announced DC Studios and two months later Cavill was out.

January 2023 Gunn announced the DCU chapter 1: Gods and Monsters, with a new Superman film written by him titled “Superman: Legacy”. It was announced he was directing in March. I was still skeptical. Call me when they are on set I’d say. Flash was finally released in June and we knew that Supergirl wouldn’t last. It felt superfluous at that point. Calle had real potential in the role too.

Then a year later in February 2024 they actually began filming. The Legacy subtitle was dropped and it became real. It was really happening. I was still cautious in my optimism. Don’t want to get my hopes too high. I have enjoyed most of what I’ve seen him do, but there was the Brightburn of it all. Plus Gunn has a tendency to take characters and adapt them in name only. That was a big concern. Plus I knew there would be jokes about super hero names which I’m so tired of.

Now, finally we have an announcement that we can count on. We know how Gunn works and that he won’t announce a date until they are sure about it. We also are getting the sequel we were denied in the last two versions. Plus it’s a sequel to a movie we loved. Man of Tomorrow!

Or maybe I’m wrong about all of this and this isn’t a Superman sequel?

Either way, I can believe I’ve still got a couple of weeks to wait for the steelbook!