As James Gunn walked into our interview to promote the newest “Superman,” the A-list Hollywood creative didn’t appear to bring any ego into the room – just, quaintly, his wife and a publicist.
Then, I asked about David Corenswet, the Julliard-trained actor he cast as the next Man of Steel.
“Yes, I have a bit of an ego about it,” Gunn said with a playful grin. Gunn was referring to his knack for turning relatively unknown actors into major stars. See Chris Pratt, who Gunn cast in his 2014 blockbuster “Guardians of the Galaxy.” Pratt received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame three years later and remains a superstar today.
“I think I’m really good at finding people who become huge stars,” Gunn said. “I think David Corenswet is the biggest movie star in the world and people don’t know it yet. And that’s what I said about Chris Pratt early on, too. There are very, very few people that have the acting chops, the comedy chops and happen to be extraordinarily handsome at the same time.”
End scene on Gunn’s feigned ego. He isn’t too big to admit he’s nervous and has a lot riding on the success of this newest “Superman” ahead of its July 11th opening. He’s not just the writer and director, he’s also the co-CEO of the newly formed DC Studios, the production company behind the big budget “Superman.”
Through the first quarter of the year, “Superman” had largely been seen as the make-or-break film for the Warner Bros. 2025 film slate. The success of Warner’s “Minecraft” and “Sinners” has lightened the load on Gunn, but not fully: “Superman” is the first release under the DC Studios banner, and Gunn, along with co-CEO Peter Safran, is launching a new cinematic universe built on DC comics like Supergirl and Batman.
But first, “Superman” needs to perform.
“My wife, who’s sitting over there, tries to calm me down and she does her best,” he said. “But you know, I’ll try to be as sober as I possibly can. I really try to live with a stoic philosophy about these things and not attach myself to negative or positive stuff.”
Gunn said he made “Guardians of the Galaxy” for his love of cinema. “Superman” is born from his love of comics, which he says helped him learn to read dating back to when he began looking at the pictures at age 3.
“I wanted to really create that world that I walked into as a child and try to recreate that for filmgoers everywhere whether they’re adults or children,” he said.
Gunn’s film finds “Superman” in unfamiliar territory, facing scrutiny from the public as adversaries sow fear and doubt about Superman’s alien origins—all to bolster their own political and corporate interests. With social media manipulation and endless TV speculation over Superman’s motives, there are parallels to today’s society.
“It’s really just coming from a place of what if this stuff is real?” Gunn said of the script.
The corporate villain is Lex Luthor, Superman’s longtime nemesis from the original comics. Here one might find Luthor resembling a modern “tech bro” with an insatiable appetite for money and power, but Gunn insists he’s not a stand-in for anyone in real life.
“I did want to have some of this Wall Street machismo,” he explains. “Corporations have become so incredibly powerful, they’re almost as powerful as governments and are maybe more powerful than governments.”
Luthor is played by Nicholas Hoult, who Gunn says was among the “really famous actors” who tested for the lead role of Superman (he won’t reveal other names). But during the screen test, Gunn saw something else in Hoult.
“The whole time I kept going, god he’s Lex. This guy’s Lex,” Gunn said. “And then (Hoult) brought even more to that role than I imagined. I think that he really went for what is the classic Lex Luthor from the comics.”
None of this is to say Gunn’s “Superman” isn’t light and charming. The script is full of the witty lines that helped make Gunn’s “Guardians of the Galaxy” franchise beloved. Not to mention, he gave Superman a cute dog named Krypto, which Gunn based on his own chaotic canine.
“We feed the canine, but he is unruly,” robots tell Superman, after Krypto trashes the Fortress of Solitude.
“People definitely like Krypto a lot,” Gunn says of the early feedback.
He insists he never sought to change the darker tone of some of the previous Superman films. Still, ask him if his universe needs another Batman vs. Superman film and you’ll get a taste of his sensibility for DC’s future.
“We’ve never really seen on a big screen in a movie theater Superman and Batman teaming up as the best friends that they are in the comics,” Gunn said. “And I think that’s where I would like to go with that.”
But first, Gunn hopes you’ll like his “Superman,” which he calls the hardest movie he’s ever made—one his childhood self has been longing to see.
“I hope it speaks to other people as much as it speaks to me,” Gunn said. “(It’s) about someone who’s really good in a world that isn’t always (good)… and I find that part of it beautiful.”
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