Screen Brief was lucky to attend an exclusive Q&A with James Gunn for the launch of the Superman teaser this week.
We were one of 50 journalists from Australia, China, and the Asia Pacific region who attended the virtual press event over Zoom. It was part of a series of press events across the world that took place a few hours after the in-person trailer launch in Los Angeles.
All the press members got to watch the trailer and had the opportunity to ask James Gunn questions about it. Here’s everything he had to say in conversation with host Erik Davis.
What we can expect from the new Superman
What is the one thing you want audiences to know at this early stage of the process?
James Gunn: I really want people to get a sense of what to expect from the film that comes out in July. I wanted to create a teaser trailer that gave the essence of what this movie is, without giving away too much of the plot.
What can we expect from the new Superman?
We can expect a Superman who is about the compassion of the human spirit, a Superman who is about kindness, love and compassion, while also being a very strong character. He is the best of humanity, even though he is an alien from outer space.
I love how the teaser shows that it’s action packed, but there’s humor, there’s heart, there’s heartbreak, and there’s romance. There’s just a little bit of everything in this thing.
That came naturally as the story evolved. It’s one of the things that’s a little bit different than some of the other Superman movies. It’s about Superman’s external struggle, but it’s also about his internal struggle.
It’s about who he is as a person, where he comes from, his parents—both his Kryptonian parents, and his, human parents. And we get to know who this guy is on a real elemental level. And that brings in all those other elements too.
On David Corenswet’s performance as Superman
How does David Corenswet Superman differ from the previous versions of Superman?
I really loved working with David Corenswet. David both has that optimistic boy scout quality that Superman has, both on screen and in real life, frankly, and a real down to earth-ness.
Besides the fact that he’s this incredibly good-looking guy, he doesn’t have any sort of arrogance or ego in that way. But he is a really phenomenally trained actor who went to school at Juilliard and is just one of the best actors I’ve ever worked with. He’s incredibly nuanced, incredibly questioning all the time, figuring out how he can give the best performance.
And there’s never a take that I look at after the dailies, and think he isn’t fully authentically Superman. He is Superman every moment he’s in the movie. And even the stuff where I’m cutting together the best performance is possible, his worst take is still great.
What’s the first thing that comes to mind in terms of what David Corenswet has brought to this role?
I think an extreme dedication. He was willing to do anything for this role in terms of preparation. Learning, reading the comics, working out. He went through a very, very long and arduous audition process in which hundreds and hundreds of people auditioned for the role of Clark Kent/Superman, and David won it.
I said to David when he got hired “You’ve got to work on two things. You got to work on your shoulders, and you’ve got to work on your vulnerability.” And those were two things that he spent the next six months on. Getting bigger and working on elements of being vulnerable on screen. Which I think was a little bit more difficult for him, as it is also difficult for Superman.
Speaking of vulnerable, I love the opening shot of this teaser trailer where he’s at his most vulnerable. I’ve never seen a Superman or comic book movie teaser start in that way—to put the hero in that place. And I thought that was such an interesting decision.
I think it was an interesting decision. It shows us what we’re kind of dealing with here. We’re dealing with Superman, this symbol of really old-fashioned values and hope, and it’s an idea that’s been a bit battered over the years. Both that sort of concept of Superman and the concept of just kindness in general. And I think that this is about letting that be what it is, and allowing those traditional values to, manifest themselves in a completely new way.
How Clark Kent’s humanity shapes the film
How will you explore Clark Kent’s humanity in this film?
That’s all the movie is about. This movie is about Clark Kent’s humanities. Yes, he’s an alien from another planet who’s super powerful, but he is also deeply, deeply human. He has emotions and feelings, and he, you know, every day he wakes up and tries to make the best choices he can, and sometimes he fails, and that’s what this movie is about.
This is about a complex character, and I think that’s the thing that audiences are going to be completely surprised by. That you can’t really see in the trailer, is these complex relationships between Clark and Lois and Lex and Clark, and how they interact, and the different values they have and how they, you know, strengthen each other and make each other weaker.
The music and score of Superman
One thing you hear in this teaser trailer is that iconic score. I got immediately emotional as soon as you hear those bars. Tell us about your approach to bringing back the iconic score but putting your own flair to it.
I knew from the beginning. John Murphy composed the score. He’s an incredibly talented guy who I love working with. And as soon as I finished the script, he was one of the first people I gave it to. I said, “start thinking of music for this. The one thing I’ll say is I do want to use the classic Williams score, but I want you to turn it and mutate it and turn it into your own thing that’ll represent this film and this story.”
There’s a very powerful thing about it. There’s a slightly melancholy thing about it. And I think those are both parts of this very emotional and touching story that we’re telling through the movie.
John Murphy not only wrote that theme, but he put together so much music for the movie that we then play on set and shoot to so that we know exactly what the score is now that score is baked into the movie.
This was a very different movie, because music is always very important to me. A lot of times I’ve used a lot of pop songs throughout my movies, and that is not the case for Superman. This movie is basically about the score and so it has an incredibly important role in the film.
I can’t wait for people to hear the whole score, because it does go into that whole Williams thing, and then it transforms into something else, and then it becomes something else again. It is a stunning piece of music. I can’t wait.
Why DCU projects will each have a distinct vision
How do you balance the darker elements of the DCU with the more hopeful and optimistic tone that is often associated with Superman? What can fans expect own for the new DCU under your leadership?
The thing they can expect from the DCU is that every film and TV project, will have own vision. Some projects are going to be family oriented, like Superman. Other ones are going to be a little bit more adult oriented, like Creature Commandos. And so, they’re all going to be very different.
Superman is interesting, because it’s not as if there’s not a lot of darkness in the film, I think, to be truly optimistic and to truly be hopeful—if everything’s going great and everything is perfect, it’s a lot easier.
So, this isn’t Superman dealing with hope and optimism in light times. He’s dealing with hope and optimism in very difficult, hard times, dark times. And that’s what the movie is.
Approaching Superman as an iconic character
You’ve had great success introducing fans to some lesser known and downright obscure comic book characters. How does approaching Superman differ from your previous comic book outings? Given that he’s the world’s most recognizable superhero.
Yeah, him and Batman [are the most recognizable]. I think that it is different, because there are some core values to who Superman is, that maybe I didn’t feel that same way about Rocket Raccoon—who was a character who I took some elements from the comic but also created him in a different way within the MCU.
And I think Superman, that sense of this goodness, of this hope, of this optimism of almost naivete, but not exactly. This belief in the goodness that he has of the human spirit. I think that is innate to the character, as well as some of the other values that Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster had there from the very beginning.
There’s a very interesting easter egg in the teaser. It’s in the teaser to the teaser (the 30-second teaser). You can see Jerry and Joe’s grandkids who are in the Daily Planet. And they shot with us the whole time in the Daily Planet. So, they’re two of the reporters are in the background of the Daily Planet.
Introducing Krypto the Superdog
I want to mention Krypto for a moment. Because there’s always this question… if Superman saves everyone, who saves Superman? I love the Krypto moment. Everybody’s going to be talking about Krypto and what his relationship is with Superman.
You see a sort of simple version of his relationship with Krypto in the teaser. When you see the movie, you realize his relationship with Krypto is much more complicated.
Krypto is based on my dog, Ozu, who is the world’s worst dog. He’s destroyed my entire house. We rescued him. He was raised in a woman’s backyard who was raising 60 dogs in a small backyard in poor section of Los Angeles, and he had never known humans, so he was just scared of me. He liked my other dog a lot, and sort of followed her, and then just destroyed all my stuff.
And he was actually one of the inspirations for Krypto. Because I thought to myself, ‘well, thank God I don’t have a super dog like Krypto. And what if Krypto was as bad as Ozu was? We’d have a pretty difficult situation.’ And so that is one of ways that I started to see this, version of Superman in a much different way. And it was very creatively invigorating.
How Superman differs to James Gunn’s prior filmography
Your superhero resume spans two different cinematic universes, and this is your first film in the new DC Universe. How do you feel this experience differs from your previous work on superhero films?
It’s very different. I don’t think of Guardians or The Suicide Squad primarily as comedies, but certainly comedy was a big part of those movies. And it’s not that there’s no humor—there’s plenty of humor in Superman. But at the core of it, it really is something different.
It’s a different sort of story, and it’s vulnerable for me to make that. Because the honest truth is, when I make a movie and then you show the movie to the audience, you got to sit with an audience watching the movie. And the easiest way that you know people like your movie is when they’re laughing, or if you’re making a horror movie, they’re screaming, and then also if they’re crying—which I got a lot of people to do with the last Guardians movie.
So, I like those external things. And in this one, I really had to be sort of strict with myself when I was writing it and filming it. It’s all about the character. It’s about the actions. It’s a big deal. Shooting flying in a different way. And so, it’s just totally different from the movies that I’ve done in the past.
Well, if you’re going to ask David to be vulnerable, then I think you’re going to need to be a little vulnerable.
That’s absolutely true.
How Superman’s costume design informs the character
You are used to making films about outsiders. However, Clark Kent, Superman is not one of those characters. So why did you choose this film to direct?
Superman is in a lot of ways, an outsider. He is an alien from another planet. And I told the story earlier, to all the people here. There was a time when I was developing the Superman costume, with David Corenswet and Juliana, our costume designer.
And it was coming together, but it had the red trunks, it had the whole thing. 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.’
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?
That was really part of where the costume came from. I saw the character in a new way. And it also showed me how David, before we started even shooting, really took everything, every moment, very seriously in all his choices and what he would do. And he wants to not be scary to kids. I thought that was a pretty cool thing that I’ve kept in mind for the character ever since that moment.
Difficult editing decisions and an alternate ending
Writers and filmmakers are always talking about the importance of ‘killing their darlings’ I was wondering if you could share something about a particular ‘darling’ that you had to sacrifice in the making of Superman.”
Oh, boy, that is a good question. And I’m so in the middle of editing. Of course, there are lines and moments of things, and I’m like, “oh I guess I have to cut that to make this thing move more elegantly.”
Because at the heart of what I’m about as a filmmaker, first and foremost—and people are going to think this is funny coming from me who makes things that are thought of as outlandish. But for me, it’s always elegance above and beyond everything else.
And that means that everything has to be fluid and smooth. And whether you’re making something crazily outlandish, something ridiculously grounded, something dark, something bright, there needs to be an elegance to it.
For me, 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.
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. That was hard. I had a pretty cool ending that was a little bit different than the ending we get—actually, a lot different.
Introducing Nicholas Hoult as Lex Luthor
In this film, Superman fights Lex Luthor. What kind of conflict structure will be depicted in their battles and relationship?
One of the things that was important to me was to make a Lex Luthor who was absolutely Superman’s equal. Maybe more that. You’ve got to be scared, and this Lex is scary. And it’s not just because he is a bad guy—because he’s pretty bad—but he has his reasons for thinking what he thinks, which we get into. And it’s a lot of ideological things about what Superman represents versus what he represents as the world’s most intelligent man.
And so, it really is this battle of ideologies between the two of them and how they look at the world. One of whom is very generous in his point of view, which is Superman, and one of them is not very generous in his point of view, which is Lex. But also, his intelligence and his way of dealing with the sort of henchmen that Lex has around him makes him incredibly dangerous to Superman.
And when you’re willing to fight, and there are no rules, you always have an upper hand over the person who’s willing to fight and has a lot of rules—which is Superman.
Nicholas Hoult looks he looks great. He’s just doing tremendous stuff right now.
When we were on set and Nick walked in there, he’s every ounce of the big time movie star you can imagine. And the women were swooning over Lex Luthor. And I’m like, ‘Oh, everybody loves a bad boy.’
Meeting fan expectations for DC characters
What are some of the things you are paying attention to and the challenges you’re facing in rebooting a hero that almost everyone in the world knows?
The biggest challenge is that everyone in the world knows who Superman is and where he came from. Some of that’s a benefit, like we don’t go into origin stories in this. Practically everybody knows that Clark Kent came here in a rocket as a baby, sent by his Kryptonian parents, and a farm couple adopted him. So, we don’t have to go through all that. That’s a benefit, in a way.
But also, so many people in this world are so intimately attached to Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman—The Big Three. They have specific ideas about what that character is to them.
Most people have come up to me and said, ‘I never really related to Superman because he’s just too powerful. I relate to Batman because he’s like the underdog.’ So that’s something I took into account from the beginning, that a lot of people don’t relate to him. I think it’s a little bit to do with how we see him at the beginning of the trailer, and the beginning of the movie, too.
And other people like Superman because he can punch planets in half. So you’ve got to deal with all these different people who have different ideas of what Superman is supposed to be. And you have to deal with all of them and hopefully people are able to go and say, ‘Well, okay, I like my idea what Superman is. Let’s see what this idea of Superman is. Let’s, let’s sit down for two hours and watch this movie and see what it is.’
That’s what you’ve got to do with the DCU, because things are going to keep changing and evolving. A lot of people keep telling me, ‘Oh my god, you made this trailer just for me! I can’t believe it!’ And you know, other people are going to feel differently about it, but they can still enjoy the story and enjoy how our view of Superman is, or whatever other DC character there is.
Introducing Rachel Brosnahan as Lois Lane
Let’s talk about Rachel Brosnahan. Tell us about your version of Lois Lane.
Lois is a journalist of the highest order. She believes in the truth pretty much at almost any price. And that makes her a real force to be reckoned with. One of the things I love the romance between Lois and Superman in the original Donner film is it was really beautiful. But in a way, it was a little of Lois being ‘Goo-goo-ga-ga’ over Superman, right? Because he flies around, and he can pick up buildings.
And I wanted to see, why does Superman love Lois so much? So, from the beginning, we did chemistry reads with Superman and Lois. And David and Rachel got these roles, not because they were just individually great as those characters—but together as a couple, they bounced off of each other in an incredibly dynamic way.
From the very beginning, you start to see why she is as strong of a force as Superman, just in a different way. And why someone, as cool and as good looking and as powerful as Superman would be in love with her. he’s the one who’s lucky at the end of the day.
How past films and comic books influenced his Superman
Superman is amongst the most adapted superheroes on the screen. There must be an enormous amount of pressure on taking on this story. Did you pull inspiration from past films or series, or did you feel you needed to come at it with a whole new angle?
Yes, definitely. There are all sorts of things from the other movies that I was impressed by. Seeing the Donner movie as a kid was very cool for me, and I loved it. I took a lot of stuff from that. Zack Snyder did a lot of amazing things with action, and I took a lot of stuff from that, and already have before then.
I took a lot of different things from different time periods. But I really go back to the comic books, because I’m first and foremost a comic book fan. I really took more inspiration from the comics than I did from the film adaptions.
What audiences can learn from the teaser trailer
What are you personally most excited for audiences to discover when they watch the teaser trailer?
I’m excited for people to see all the different elements of the teaser trailer. The big silver age science fiction stuff, the romance, the action beats, Krypto. And the one really, kind of potent line to me in the trailer that moves me, is when he says “Krypto, take me home”. And Krypto starts dragging Superman home. And that’s at the end of the day, what this is about.
For me, it’s about bringing the innate goodness of Superman, bringing it home. Bringing this character home, bringing our battered world to a brighter place of healing and bringing that home.
And hopefully Superman can be a symbol of that as well. I think that this is the right time for this movie, and I’m excited about people seeing the trailer. And I’m even more excited because the trailer really is a good representation of the film,
I think it is an authentic representation of what the film is. And I just can’t wait for people to see the full movie in July.
Thank you for reading our coverage of this exclusive Q&A with James Gunn!
When sharing any quotes from this interview, please tag @ScreenBrief on social media and link this article.
A very big thank you to Warner Bros. Australia and Universal Pictures Australia for inviting us to the press launch of the trailer! Stay tuned for more Superman coverage from Screen Brief in 2025!
Read more DC News from Screen Brief.
