Superman 2025: What we know about James Gunn's take on the Man of Steel, including its release date, cast, and more

Superman hasn't taken up his cape on the big screen since, well, whatever the heck was going on at the end of The Flash. That's about to change, however, when writer and director James Gunn kicks off a new era for DC with this year's Superman.

The Guardians of the Galaxy director's upcoming film stars David Corenswet as Superman, Rachel Brosnahan as reporter Lois Lane, and Nicholas Hoult as the brilliant and cruel billionaire Lex Luthor. Given that it's the start of a new franchise, it also features a veritable slew of other heroes, villains, dogs, and normies — but we'll get to them shortly.

First, let's answer the big questions. When is Superman coming out? What's it about? Is there a trailer? Is Supergirl gonna cameo or what? Read on for everything we know about James Gunn's Superman.

When does Superman come out?

Superman will captivate audiences in a single bound beginning on July 11.

Is there a Superman trailer?

Yes. In fact, there are two Superman trailers.

The first Superman trailer arrived last December and offered glimpses not just of Corenswet's Man of Steel, but also his Clark Kent at work at the Daily Planet alongside Lois Lane. Hoult's Lex Luthor casts a long shadow over the trailer, nearly obscuring the quick glimpses we get of Nathan Fillion's Green Lantern,  Isabela Merced's Hawkgirl, Edi Gathegi's Mister Terrific, and Kryptonian robot Kelex.

Watch it below:

We admit it's pushing it to call the next clip a "trailer," but the Superman team shared a nearly five-minute preview during April's CinemaCon that showed an extended cut of the previous trailer's opening scene, in which a battered Superman is saved by loyal pup Krypto and whisked to the Fortress of Solitude. The back half of the clip recycles many of the shots from the previous trailer, but with a few new snippets.

Check it out:

What is Superman about?

An early synopsis for Superman revealed the film "tells the story of Superman's journey to reconcile his Kryptonian heritage with his human upbringing as Clark Kent of Smallville, Kansas. He is the embodiment of truth, justice and the American way, guided by human kindness in a world that sees kindness as old-fashioned."

Since then, Gunn has elaborated on some of its plot points and themes, including while speaking with Entertainment Weekly. "The central conflict revolves a lot around Lex Luthor's attempts to defeat and destroy Superman," he told us in April. "I think Lex Luthor thinks of Superman in the way that an artist thinks of A.I. Here's this guy who's this [incredible] genius scientist who's worked his whole life to become one of the richest, most powerful men in the world, and he does it all to be lauded. I mean, he wants to be the greatest, and suddenly this jerk comes in wearing a cape with a lantern jaw and a cocky grin, and he just takes all of the oxygen out of the room, out of the room of Earth, and it creates a burning hatred in the guy."

Gunn spoke about its broader themes with EW. "What I tried to bring to it is something beautiful that is about the goodness of human beings, about kindness in people, because that's what Superman represents to me," he said. "He almost represents something old-fashioned, and yet I think that's exactly what we need right now: kindness, goodness, the innate moral values that we grew up with, that somehow the internet has drowned out and deemed weak. That's who he is, and that's what his strength is. So that interested me."

Brosnahan shared her own interpretation of the film. "It feels like it really is a story about what makes you human at the end of the day," she said. "And things like love and curiosity and goodness and hope and courage are all the things that make us human."

Is Superman a love story?

Isn't every telling of Superman something of a love story?

"I think one of the things that I loved so much about the Christopher Reeve, Margot Kidder, [Richard] Donner Superman was that it felt like a love story wrapped in a universe that was familiar but not quite our own. And isn't love at the root of every story, in a way?" Brosnahan told us. "You have to love so hard to hate something, too. I think it's interesting to see these two characters exploring their love because she's somebody, as you said, who leads with her head. He's somebody who leads with his heart."

For Gunn, the love story was an essential part of his telling, with the director telling us that he sought to bring "a complexity to the relationship between Superman and Lois, and also between Lois and Lex."

He added, "We have a great 10-minute scene of Lois and Clark going over their relationship, the way they look at the world, their ideals, their ethics, and how that makes them who they are."

What inspired Gunn's Superman?

Speaking with EW, Gunn shared that the "tone and the look" of his Superman was inspired by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely's All-Star Superman, a 12-issue run of comics released between 2005 and 2008.

"I read that comic book, and it really has this feeling of the big, old-school, science-fiction Silver Age comics. We have robots and monster babies and giant kaiju and all of that stuff," he said. "But that is also grounded around these incredibly real relationships with a couple that has started dating a few months ago, and now they're really learning the ins and outs of each other. What's good about them? What's not so good about them? And what are their ideals like? We have Lois Lane, who's a pragmatist, and Superman is an idealist, and how does that work together?"

Who's in the cast of Superman?

Playing Superman is relative newcomer David Corenswet, a Philadelphia-born actor whose career began with leading roles on a pair of Ryan Murphy Netflix series, The Politician (2019–2020) and Hollywood (2020). In the years since, he's played supporting roles in Pearl (2022) and Twisters (2024), as well as the acclaimed HBO miniseries We Own This City (2022).

"For me, rather than think about anything old or new, I just found that the thing that I was drawn to most with Superman was the tension between his love of humanity and the role that he can play for them and the loneliness that he feels in the fact that he can never quite be one of them," the actor told EW. "And that plays out in so many different ways, not least of which is his love of being Clark Kent and getting to play as one of them, at least for short periods of time."

Daily Planet reporter Lois Lane, meanwhile, will be played by Rachel Brosnahan, the Emmy-winning star of Amazon Prime's The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (2017–2023). "Today, we're living in a world where print journalism, to some perhaps, is an endangered art form," Brosnahan previously said. "And she is someone who has dedicated her entire life to it."

Also appearing is tough-guy actor Frank Grillo as Rick Flag Sr., who first played the role in DC's animated series Creature Commandos. Gunn confirmed to EW that, in addition to appearing on season 2 of Max's Peacemaker with John Cena, Grillo would also bring Rick to Superman.

"This isn't just a good guy, not at all," Gunn told us. "We see all different sides of his character. He is morally a complex human being. Grillo is somebody who I've known for a little while, and I've wanted to work with him for a long time. He was one of the first people that I talked to when I took over the studio, like 'we're going to find something cool for you,' and now he is everywhere."

Rounding out the cast is Skyler Gisondo (The Righteous Gemstones) as photographer Jimmy Olsen, Wendell Pierce (The Wire) as Daily Planet editor-in-chief Perry White, Sean Gunn (Guardians of the Galaxy) as businessman Maxwell Lord, and Beck Bennett (Saturday Night Live) as reporter Steve Lombard.

And then there's the superheroes. Nathan Fillion (The Rookie) plays Gunn's Green Lantern (replete with a comic-accurate bowl cut), Edi Gathegi (For All Mankind) as the intelligent Mister Terrific, and Isabela Merced (Alien: Romulus) as Hawkgirl. Barry breakout Anthony Carrigan, meanwhile, will appear as Metamorpho, a man who, after being exposed to a radioactive meteorite, learns to change himself into different elemental compounds.

Finally, Superman will also feature a cameo from journalist Will Reeve, the son of the late Superman actor Christopher Reeve.

What about Lex Luthor?

Lex Luthor, the big bad of the Superman franchise, has taken on several skins over the years. He's been portrayed as a ruthless businessman, an evil scientist, and a vain politician, while actors have played the supervillain with differing strains of campy flash and genuine menace. In Gunn's Superman, Luthor will be played by Emmy-nominated actor Nicholas Hoult, who played Beast in the X-Men franchise before appearing in films like The Menu (2022), Juror #2 (2024), and Nosferatu (2024).

Previously, Hoult described Superman's Lex thusly: "This Lex is obviously smart and ruthless, and he has to outmaneuver Superman on certain levels because he can't match him on other. There's also something about this character, hopefully from my standpoint, where even though you perhaps don't agree with his process, there's an element where you can understand on some levels where he's coming from and why perhaps what he's pushing as his ideology is perhaps better for humanity."

Hoult would later touch on this aspect of his character when speaking with EW, saying that Lex leads with a "love for humanity" and perceives himself as a protector of the larger populace.

Pivoting off that, Corenswet said, "This conversation made me see an interesting, weird, strange thing, which may not be true, but Lex is sort of a combination of Superman and Lois, where he has all of Lois' intelligence and foresight and skepticism that allows him to make these incredible advances and control the narrative and the government and all these things that he has control over," he said. "But he has Superman's passion for the world and for being a symbol of something, standing for something, and being a public-facing symbol. And maybe the downfall is that Lex has decided what's right between those two and which should win out, whereas Superman and Lois are in a constant battle about what is right, so they each get checked by the other."

Hoult could't say much about the nature of his Lex's LuthorCorp, but he did drop that the company specializes in "tech defense." Gunn elaborated a bit, saying, "I think Lex has invented one of the best forms of battery in the entire world that almost everything runs on. And we don't ever talk about this in the movie, but I think that's where he's made the majority of his money."

What about Krypto? Krypto's in it, right?

You bet. Krypto, Superman's dog, has appeared in a number of Man of Steel stories over the years, including Smallville, Superman & Lois, and Titans. (And who could forget the CW's animated Krypto the Superdog?)

Krypto has been a highlight of the footage we've seen thus far, which shows Krypto saving a bloody and battered Superman from the elements in the Arctic tundra outside the Fortress of Solitude.

Last year, Gunn revealed his film's Krypto was inspired by his own rescue dog, Ozu. "Krypto was inspired by our dog Ozu, who we adopted shortly after I started writing Superman." he shared via X (formerly Twitter). "Ozu, who came from a hoarding situation in a backyard with 60 other dogs & never knew human beings, was problematic to say the least. He immediately came in & destroyed our home, our shoes, our furniture — he even ate my laptop. It took a long time before he would even let us touch him. I remember thinking, 'Gosh, how difficult would life be if Ozu had superpowers?' — and thus Krypto came into the script & changed the shape of the story as Ozu was changing my life."

Gunn brought Ozu with him to the Puppy Bowl in February and shared a few more details about Krypto, who he calls his Superman's "best friend." He said, "Krypto has all the powers of Superman and is as lovable and mischievous as many of the irresistible pups we'll see today."

How will Superman tease the new DC Universe?

In 2022, Gunn stepped up alongside Peter Safran as the new heads of DC Studios at Warner Bros, and it wasn't long before a whole new slate of superhero fare was announced by the studio. It all begins with Gunn's Superman, which will likely feature appearances by some of the characters that will be leading future DC films and series.

One of them may very well be Milly Alcock's Supergirl, who will get her own film in the summer of 2026. In January, The Hollywood Reporter said that Alcock's Supergirl will "first appear in Gunn's Superman movie," though it hasn't been confirmed by the studio.

When we asked Gunn about Superman's relation to the larger DC universe, he said:

When he says "pretty soon," it's hard for us not to think he's referring to Superman.

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