The Man of Steel will soon fly again. DC Studios co-CEO James Gunn held screen tests this weekend for the lead roles in his upcoming reboot film Superman: Legacy, according to Borys Kit reports at The Hollywood Reporter. Gunn also wrote and will direct the project, which will formally launch a newly minted DC cinematic universe to replace the failed DCEU.
WESTWOOD, CALIFORNIA – MAY 08: Nicholas Hoult attends LA Special Screening of Fox Searchlight … [+]
Everything is riding on Superman: Legacy being a success. WBD and DC Studios can’t afford any setbacks or underperformance this time around, after the DCEU seems to be ending not with a bang but a whimper. But Gunn knows how to deliver the goods, as his Guardians of the Galaxy movies at Marvel Studios demonstrate, and his first DC movie The Suicide Squad is one of the best DC movies. And among the many things he’s great at, Gunn is a master of casting.
The finalists for the role of Clark Kent/Superman are Nicholas Hoult, David Corenswet, and Tom Brittney. Finalists for the role of Lois Lane are Emma Mackey, Rachel Brosnahan, and Phoebe Dynevor. The role of Lex Luthor is said include candidates Alexander Skarsgård and Bill Skarsgård, and there are also rumors Brainiac will make an appearance as well (perhaps the Skarsgård brothers will take both villain roles).
Hoult was previously up for the role of Bruce Wayne/Batman in Matt Reeves’ The Batman, but Reeves ultimately cast Robert Pattinson. After the casting announcement, I said I suspected Hoult would be a frontrunner for the inevitable recasting of Superman, and he’s been on my own shortlist for the role ever since. So I’m happy to see him in the running, and in my humble opinion Hoult feels like he has the right sensibilities for a James Gunn movie. At 33 years old, Hoult is the oldest candidate for Superman, so if Gunn wants to cast the role as being 20-something then that could cut against Hoult’s chances.
Corenswet bears a strong resemblance to a younger Henry Cavill, so on the one hand his casting could more easily appeal to fans of the DCEU who are upset about Cavill’s absence. He’s also the youngest of the contenders for Superman, and the role is said to skew younger. On the other hand, Corenswet would need to bring something unique to the role to look like more than a Cavill do-over, particularly with the Clark persona.
Tom Brittney seems to me to be the candidate who most represents the Tim Sale incarnation of Superman from Jeph Loeb’s Superman For All Seasons, which is among the inspirations for some of the characterization, from what I’ve heard. If that’s accurate — and I hope it is, because a Superman movie taking character and tonal inspiration from All Star Superman and Superman For All Seasons sounds terrific — then Brittney can bring the farm boy charm the role might call for.
All of the actors up for the role of Superman are worthy contenders. Distinguishing Clark’s everyday personality and behavior from his costumed identity as Superman, while demonstrating how each reflects a different but consistent part of his entire being, is crucial to capturing the character in the right way so his arc resonates with average people, and I think this will be the deciding factor.
My current guess is that Hoult will win the role, but I think Corenswet is a close second. My theory is, if Corenswet was the frontrunner after the first round of screen tests during which Corenswet read with Mackey, then we wouldn’t have seen Mackey return to screen test with the Hoult and Brittney. Mackey is the presumed frontrunner for Lois, since she is the only one brought back to read alongside the Superman contenders.
I’d love to see Superman: Legacy take some inspiration from The Office’s workplace dynamics and elements of the Pam-Jim romance. This would also help distinguish between Clark’s everyday life and personality, and his Superman persona. Even physically, a more “charmingly disheveled” look for Clark would be an interesting contrast to Superman’s more “chiseled role model” presentation. Or the reverse could work, too, if Clark is more of a spit-and-polish farm boy, while Superman is when he lets his hair down and is more casual.
If Mackey is indeed the frontrunner to play Lois — it previously seemed as if Rachel Brosnahan was the favorite to win the role — that makes me think Gunn does want a younger sensibility, and while it might seem like the difference between late-20s and early-30s is not significant, and while indeed performers play roles younger than their real ages all of the time, three or four years can start to make a difference after a franchise is a decade or so deep. Which favors Corenswet, as the 29 year old among the Clark/Superman contenders.
So while I feel a lot of factors work in Hoult’s favor and I’d love to see him cast in the role, I can see how Corenswet might be on the verge of securing frontrunner status after all.
Yet I still come back to the fact that after Mackey’s read seems (meaning “not confirmed”) to have secured her status as a frontrunner, she then came back to read with all of the would-be Supermans (Supermen?). Maybe I’m wildly off the mark here, but this suggests to me that the decision about Clark came down to who had the best chemistry with Mackey, and while that doesn’t at all rule out Corenswet having a good read with her, it could mean it wasn’t a decisive connection.
But there could be plenty of other reasons things shook out like this, and it’s the first weekend of screen tests, so the most we can do is offer our best guesses and wait to see who wins the cape.
Regarding the Skarsgårds, I can imagine either of them as Luthor or Brainiac, so since we only have these few names to toss around, I’ll say I’d expect Bill Skarsgård to play Luthor and Alexander Bill Skarsgård to play Brainiac, if they are both up for both roles.
The wild card here is that, if Corenswet does wind up cast as Superman, then I think Hoult could win the role of Luthor after all.
This is obviously all still unconfirmed, and it’s only eight performers up for three or four roles in a film that’s going to have a large cast with lots of other significant supporting and major characters. But right now, it’s worth noting this is a whole lot of white people lined up for the biggest roles in the first movie relaunching DC’s shared cinematic world, so I hope we see a whole lot more diversity as casting develops.
Check back soon for more updates as Superman: Legacy pre-production continues, dear readers. And plenty of other DCU projects will get up and running soon, so I’ll have reports about all of them as the situation develops.
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