James Gunn revealed he cast Bradley Cooper as Superman’s father because he needed someone who could fill the “stature” of the character.
In the newly released Superman, Cooper plays the titular character’s birth father Jor-El, a role first played in film by Marlon Brando in the 1978 adaptation.
Gunn explained what led to Cooper’s casting as the superhero’s father. “Bradley’s a friend of mine,” the writer-director told Entertainment Tonight about the Silver Linings Playbook star. Gunn directed Cooper in the Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy in which he played Rocket Raccoon.
“I needed somebody who could play Jor-El, who had the stature of what we imagine that character to be. Somebody that could walk in the footsteps of Marlon Brando,” Gunn continued.
“A lot of times, Jor-El is played by a 70-year-old man, and that means he was 70 when he had a baby. So, I wanted somebody that wasn’t too old. Everyone was bringing up all these actors that were too old for me. I think Bradley was perfect, he did it for me as a favor because he’s my friend, and I really appreciated him doing it.”
Gunn’s film about the iconic DC superhero stars David Corenswet as Superman, Rachel Brosnahan as Lois Lane and Nicholas Hoult as the villainous Lex Luther. The cast also includes Isabela Merced as Hawkgirl, Edi Gathegi as Mister Terrific, Anthony Carrigan as Metamorpho, Nathan Fillion as Guy Gardner, and Gabriela de Faría as The Engineer.
In a four-star review for The Independent, Clarisse Loughrey wrote that new Superman would “make you believe in superhero movies again”.
“In this Metropolis, as in all good Metropolises, we can test out our collective values and question how they’ve been constructed,” she wrote.
“Corenswet, who’s such a natural fit for the part that it’s a little scary, lends him an endearing, almost childlike restlessness; Brosnahan pushes Lois’s internal conflict between love and journalistic duty; Hoult goes for spittle-flecked insecurity.
“Superman is conscious enough of its own history to work in elements of John Williams’s 1978 theme. But this is, distinctly, still a James Gunn film in a genre where authorial voice is vanishingly hard to find.”
According to box office numbers, Superman had already raked in $22.5m in Thursday previews. By Friday, the figure had more than doubled to $56.5m domestically. Overseas, it added $40m, bringing its worldwide total to $96.5m, surpassing early estimates of $90m.
The domestic opening day total makes Superman the second biggest earner of 2025, just behind A Minecraft Movie, which debuted in April with $57.11m, and ahead of Lilo & Stitch’s $55.94m May opening.
Superman was projected to reach over $210m globally after its first weekend in theaters, and it has done just that, hitting $217m, per Variety.
Superman is out in theaters now.
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