How do you bring renewed strength to the Superman franchise? That's the first question that the new head of DC Studios is answering.
James Gunn wrote and directed the wildly successful Guardians of the Galaxy franchise, and in 2022 he was the choice to lead the DC Comics universe (at least, as far as how the characters are represented on the screen). Superman, to be released July 11, is the first feature film that Gunn has offered as the CEO of DC Studios.
Morning Edition host A Martínez spoke with Gunn about his vision of Superman and the characters in his orbit — as well as the all-important casting of actor David Corenswet in the lead role.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
A MARTÍNEZ: Why was David [Corenswet] the pick for Superman? What made him the right choice?
JAMES GUNN: He embodies Superman. My friend came to the set, and she was like, "Oh my God, he has such a Superman face." I'm like, Yeah, he does. He looks like he was chiseled out of a rock.
But also we have long scenes of dialogue and not everyone can handle like that pitter-patter, "My Girl Friday," sort of Preston Sturges dialogue — really fast back-and-forth. The guy needed to be able to deliver that dialogue in a way that I wanted it to be heard. It's musical.
He's a great actor. I mean, you know, he's Juilliard trained — which he brings up too much — but it really does show up. He's able to access any emotions. And he's funny; I think that we needed an actor with a sense of humor. It doesn't necessarily mean that Superman's always that funny — the film isn't a comedy, but there is plenty of humor.
Finding an actor that had all those points was terrifying for me. When I started casting for the movie, I thought there's a chance that it wouldn't be worth making the movie. You need to have somebody who looked like Superman, who had the humor, and had the dramatic chops. And that's not too many people.
A MARTÍNEZ: And this Superman, to me, at least, is the most physically vulnerable Superman. I mean, the movie starts right off the bat with Superman losing a battle, and he looks really beat up. It's not one of those things where kryptonite is weakening him. He gets into a fight that he can't win. I think some Superman fans are going to be like, "What?! Why is Superman losing a fight?"
JAMES GUNN: That was one of the first images I had in my head when I was trying to think of what this movie could be: this idea of Superman looking up and just having a little blood drip out of his mouth. It's such potent imagery of who Superman is, who Superman represents to all of us, where we are in this world, what's happening.
There's the hard thing when you get into making comic book movies. Superman is a superhero. But you find out that people have very distinct ideas of what these characters are supposed to be. And they're different. A lot of people want Superman to be able to punch a planet and break it in half. It makes him being in a world with other superheroes kind of irrelevant because he's so powerful. I didn't want a Superman that could make The Flash, Wonder Woman, Batman, and Green Lantern irrelevant. Superman is often portrayed as a god. I don't think our Superman is a god.
We all want to be Superman. We want to fly, we wanna shoot beams out of our eyes, have super strength to be able to beat up anybody who comes at us. We go into the movie wanting to be Superman. And I think that by the end of the movie, we realize that Superman wants to be us. He wants to be a human being. That is his biggest desire.
And he never quite experiences life in that way. He always feels a little bit on the outside. So I think that does differentiate from some of the other Supermans. This is a personal story, this is a story about Superman in the way he looks at himself. And despite all of the big, huge battles and monsters and robots and colorful characters, this is about a guy who is challenged with how he thinks about himself as a person and how he comes out of that on the other side.
A MARTÍNEZ: Superman's quest for humanity — it's tricky, right? He's not human. He'll never be human. He's raised by human parents, raised on earth. But there's always going to be that thin line that separates him from everyone else.
JAMES GUNN: He's an alien. But I think that it also depends on how we define human. In some ways, he's incredibly human. In fact, in some ways, he's more human than most of us because he's so present to his love of humanity. He's so present to his own sense of values, his morality.
A MARTÍNEZ: And this idea of wanting to be human, wanting to be accepted by humans (because he came to earth to live among humans) — I can't help but kind of think about a parallel when it comes to the news. There are people that come to this country that want to be American — that want everyone else to see them as Americans — but some people don't. Some people always have that, so to speak, wall between them.
JAMES GUNN: That is part of what is facing Superman — how is he looked at by other people, but also how big of a deal is it how other people think of you?
A MARTÍNEZ: One of the characters that you feature in this film that I think has been criminally underused — actually, it's never been used in the live action films of Superman, mostly in just cartoons or comics — is the dog, Krypto. What was behind wanting Krypto?
JAMES GUNN: The truth is that I committed to writing this thing after years of Peter Safran [Gunn's co-CEO at DC Studios] badgering me. And at about that time, I adopted a dog. His name is Ozu, and he was raised in a hoarding situation. [The previous owner] had about 60 dogs that were living in the woman's backyard. And they were just laying on top of each other, mottled and messed up. It was a sad situation.
A rescue organization rescued these dogs, and I went into this room with all these dogs. Some of them were friendly. Some of them were not. And my dog was one of them that was not. But he had this funky ear that stood out. I wanted that dog.
He wanted nothing to do with me. Or my wife. And he just proceeded to destroy my house. Like, literally chewing up all of my furniture. He chewed up all of my shoes. Every time I walked across the floor, he was biting my feet really hard, so I would sit up on the kitchen counter and sit cross-legged and try to get away from him. He ate my $10,000 laptop. He's completely the world's worst dog.
And I said, "Well, thank God he doesn't have superpowers!" And that was like, oh, boom! And so it just started there.
And he IS my dog, by the way. We brought him into the 3D room — there's like 10,000 cameras in this orb, and my dog was biting people and we put him on the thing, and he's just sitting there all pissed off. And then we 3D-modeled Krypto after my dog.
A MARTÍNEZ: Now, Lex Luthor is played by Nicholas Hoult. He's a tech defense industry kind of magnate who's leveraged his power to manipulate world leaders. What struck me about this Lex Luthor is how much he cares about public opinion. Because as brilliant as he is, as powerful as he is, it just seems like he wants people to love him, right?
JAMES GUNN: Yeah. I think he doesn't feel loved and I think he wants to be loved. There's a big part of me that really relates to Lex. I'd get Lex if he wasn't so mean to Superman and a dog.
I think of Lex a lot as like Salieri in "Amadeus." He was considered the greatest person in the world. There were other metahumans in this world, other superheroes, but he was great enough to overcome that because he was so freakin' smart. And then this guy comes down from the sky and he's wearing this stupid costume and he's incredibly handsome and charming and can shoot beams out of his eyes and flies. Kids love him. Suddenly [Lex] is not the best anymore. He's forgotten in the public eye. And he just can't live with that because everything he did was driven by the fact that he needed the esteem of others to make himself feel good.
So he's now taking on his jealousy, his envy, almost as a holy mission to rid the world of Superman. He uses that to rationalize his hatred and to believe that he's doing something good for the world because he thinks [Superman] is ruining the world, not only for Lex but for everyone. That humans no longer have meaning. So he's taken on the weight of human beings in a way through this complicated self-rationalization.
A MARTÍNEZ: Superman finds out the harsh reality that there can be a disconnect sometimes between the good things that you do and the way people perceive you. Are we more suspicious and jaded now when we see someone doing a good thing? That there has to be a nefarious, dark reason why they're doing something good?
JAMES GUNN: I mean, constantly. That's just the Internet. The Internet is there to put a spin on everything in the most negative light possible. And it's so cynical.
Superman is the opposite of that. He's not cynical. And I think that one of my fears about doing Superman — because I was offered Superman seven years ago, and I was afraid it was too mainstream for me, too Pollyanna, too good natured, that I'm edgier filmmaker than that. And the truth is, there's nothing more edgy than him not being cynical, just being a good-natured, kind guy. Because that is absolutely going against the grain in this world today. And I love that part of the movie.
The audio version of this story was produced by Claire Murashima.
Copyright 2025 NPR
