James Gunn Says He Was Hired For ‘Superman Legacy’ Six Months Ago, Raising Cavill Questions

If you need any further evidence about what an utter mess DC has been lately, look no further than something James Gunn has just revealed on Twitter.

Gunn posted an Instagram story saying that Superman Legacy was in development before he and Peter Safran took over as DCU Studio heads. This led a fan to ask whether he mean Superman Legacy as a wholly separate project, or Henry Cavill’s Man of Steel 2, which they changed to Superman Legacy and didn’t bring Cavill back.

Gunn went on to clarify that no really, Superman Legacy always existed as a separate project. He was hired to write it six months ago, well before he was given control over the whole of the DCU. This is news to everyone, because the common thought was that Superman Legacy was Gunn’s idea as the genesis for the new DCU that he concocted after he was given the job.

Now, this raises a lot of questions as to what on earth was going on with Henry Cavill’s return as Superman, which was spearheaded by The Rock after he pushed incredibly hard to get Cavill into Black Adam as a cameo, and Cavill himself said the studio told him to announce his return as Superman back when he reappeared in the role, something he said when he talked about meeting with Gunn and Safran to reveal that wasn’t happened after all.

So the chaos of WB appears to have created a situation where they allowed The Rock to bring back Cavill to play old, DCEU Superman, but at the same time, had greenlit Superman Legacy with a new Superman with James Gunn. I’m not sure if this was originally going to be some sort of Affleck/Pattinson Batman split, with Superman Legacy existing as its own universe before it was instead reimagined as the cornerstone for the new DCU, but that’s sure what it sounds like.

If Gunn was hired to write Superman Legacy six months ago, that’s late August 2022. Black Adam debuted in late October 2022 with the Cavill cameo and the big fanfare about his return. Gunn and Safran were hired to run DC literally days after Black Adam’s premiere. So either WB was always planning to rug-yank Cavill, or they were planning two entirely separate Superman projects (not even counting the third Superman they have active on Superman and Lois).

Just…an utter mess. I can understand why the decision was made to bring on Gunn and Safran and essentially nuke everything. Except, they sort of didn’t. Since taking over Gunn has seemed open to DCEU heroes like Ezra Miller’s Flash and Jason Momoa’s Aquaman keeping those roles but just…not Cavill. All of this seems weirdly focused on getting rid of Cavill’s Superman, and this new reveal makes it even more complicated and confusing about what exactly happened here with WB management.

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