It wasn’t exactly a surprise to learn that James Gunn’s Superman was getting a sequel. The first movie was a solid hit, and Gunn himself, while stopping short of confirming a sequel, spoke openly about the character’s future in his new DCU. That said, the fact that a sequel was announced so soon, complete with a release date in 2027, was a bit of a surprise. And yet, that’s not the most shocking thing about Man of Tomorrow.
Part of the reason that announcing a release date less than two years away is a shock is that it means that filming will need to start in less than a year, which means that a script will need to be done very soon. While one might think that would put considerable time and pressure on James Gunn, it turns out that’s not the case, because the script for Man of Tomorrow has already been written. In response to a fan on Threads who asked Gunn how much of the script had been written, he said…
All of it. Just in the necessary and lengthy stage [of] rewriting and rewriting some more. It's been a lot of fun.
This goes a long way to explain just why everybody was willing to announce the upcoming DC movie, with a title and a release date, less than two months after Superman hit theaters. While sequels can often get the greenlight shortly after an original film's success, they're rarely given release dates because work on them typically hasn't actually started yet.
We know this year's other big box office hit, Lilo & Stitch, is getting a sequel too, but nobody has given that one a release date because it's unlikely anybody even knows what the movie will be yet, much less has written a script. This makes it quite surprising that the first draft of the script is already done. When the heck did he have time to write it?
James Gunn is the co-head of DC Studios. He wrote and directed Superman. He wrote all of Peacemaker Season 2, and he directed a lot of it. He wrote all of the Creature Commandoes animated series. When has this guy had time to write another movie?
He certainly could have written it in the last two months, once his work on Superman was done, but writing a complete script in two months is a pretty fast pace. And I figured he might take it easy and take a break after finishing Superman before jumping into the sequel.
Given that James Gunn either found time to work on the sequel script among all his other projects or hammered it out in the last couple of months, it seems that inspiration struck, and he knew exactly what the sequel to Superman needed to be. Beyond the title, Man of Tomorrow, we know very little. Although the announcement came with an image of Superman and Lex Luthor, the latter wearing a power suit that is famous in the comics for giving Lex the ability to fight Superman himself.
While there’s still work to be done to get the script in its final form, and while, as Gunn says, that takes time, the fact that the script is otherwise done means it’s unlikely that Man of Tomorrow will see any significant delays. The movie really is going to hit in two years. I can’t wait.
