Meet the New Superman! First Exciting Look at Summer 2025’s Biggest Movie Event

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s the new Superman! Clad in the classic blue and red, he is set to soar back into movie theaters, yet the first trailer for James Gunn’s film starts with a landing—or rather, a harsh crash into the snow. The Krypton native’s bloody face and wheezing breath set the rhythm for the subsequent images we are shown.

According to James Gunn, this should be seen as a metaphor for America today. However, there might be more to it, as this crash and the superhero’s physical condition could also symbolize the current state of DC, forced to reboot its cinematic universe after a series of failures and poor decisions. Under the direction of the ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ filmmaker, who, alongside producer Peter Safran, architects this new iteration, Gunn is tasked with bringing Superman “back home,” as the Man of Steel requests to his dog Krypto.

The trailer then moves on to mostly dialogue-free scenes, yet filled with a sense of hope for a brighter tomorrow. Despite the presence of Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) and shots of a contested Superman—similar to when Henry Cavill’s version faced Batman—the trailer emphasizes the optimism that Superman’s presence ignites among the citizens of Metropolis, who look up to the sky, and his love story with Lois Lane.

Previously portrayed by Amy Adams and Henry Cavill in the last DC Universe iteration, Lois Lane and Clark Kent are now played by Rachel Brosnahan (‘The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’) and David Corenswet (‘Twisters’). While we’ll have to wait to see their chemistry, Corenswet already looks dashing in the iconic Superman suit, with James Gunn seemingly drawing major inspiration from the 1978 film starring Christopher Reeve, whose famous musical theme can be heard in a reorchestrated and arranged version.

The trailer also showcases future allies of the hero, from Green Lantern Guy Gardner (Nathan Fillion) to Hawkgirl (Isabela Merced) and Mr. Terrific (Edi Gathegi), ending with the hero’s uplifting takeoff, reinforcing the optimism at play. It hints that James Gunn is determined to elevate Superman and DC back to greatness, with a premiere slated for July 9.

“A Superman Who Stays True to His Ultimate Good Guy Roots”

The director and producer really went all out, hosting part of the press in Los Angeles on Monday, December 16, to unveil the trailer and clearly state his ambitions alongside his three main actors. He also took some questions.

AlloCiné: As often with your work, and as the trailer clearly demonstrates, the story and characters come first. How did you conceive this story that honors the legacy of Superman and his world, while making it accessible and appealing to a new generation?

James Gunn: I didn’t start writing a Superman movie thinking I wanted to pay homage to this or that and remain open at the same time. I primarily aimed to write a story that excited, moved, and felt authentic to me. That’s how it all began, but it took me a while to get to what you see as the starting point of the film, part of which is in the trailer.

But I knew I wanted a Superman who stays true to his origins as the ultimate good guy. So, I made a movie about kindness, about goodness. That’s what I told the cast at our dinner the night before shooting started, that the world seems to lack a lot of good things and our film needed to be one of those good things. And for it to truly be so, we needed to be good to each other, to the crew, and be authentic. To me, this film is about that more than anything else.

The image of Krypto flying to Superman’s rescue reminds us of stories of people who were saved by their pets. Can you talk about the relationship between Superman and Krypto in this film and your choice to start the trailer with our hero in his most vulnerable state?

James Gunn: From the outset, we show a different side of Superman than what we’re used to seeing in the movies about him. Because this movie is less about superpowers than about a human being: who he is as a person who struggles in his everyday life. So, I thought that would be a good starting point for the trailer, but his relationship with Krypto is complicated because he’s far from being the perfect dog he appears to be here (laughs).

There’s a lot more about Krypto than what you see in this trailer. But I also thought it was a way to show that we were going to embrace all of Superman’s mythology, where too many superhero films have featured a character—whether it’s Batman or Superman—without embracing the rest. But he lives in a world of superheroes, an alternate universe to ours, where they exist, even though he remains quite down-to-earth in many respects.

There are a lot of humans, real people who have a life. But Superman exists in this world, and he has friends who are also superheroes. A flying dog. A giant fortress that springs from the ground. He fights giant monsters. There are a lot of things we love about comic books, which have to do with Superman’s mythology that we haven’t been able to see in many adaptations, much less realistically. But I hope that’s what we’ve managed to do.

What were James’s references for you to become Superman, David?

David Corenswet: I read the comic book “All Star Superman,” particularly for Clark Kent, because playing that side of the character has a lot of interesting challenges. But it was good to have a version that was mostly silent. I hadn’t read many comic books, so I didn’t know about these different versions of Clark. I knew the ones that had appeared in movies and TV shows, so I was able to create my own. I also took some vague inspiration from my brother-in-law, who is about 6 feet tall and weighs 265 pounds, has a deeper voice, and always seems to be in the way when he tries not to be (laughs). Like Clark, in a way.

Can you tell us about the musical theme we hear here?

James Gunn: I knew from the beginning what I wanted to do with the music. I thought about it a lot, wondering whether we were going to do something different or use John Williams’s theme. The soundtrack of the 1978 Superman is one of my favorites. When I was a kid, what I loved most about that movie was its music. That’s really what I took away from it, more than anything else. But since I knew we were going to do something that looked both to the past and the future, we needed to find a balance.

John Murphy is a composer I love working with, and he started working on the music even before the script was finished. He was actually one of the first people I gave it to, along with Peter Safran and a few others, so he could start writing the music. I told him that I wanted to use a version of John Williams’s theme, but that it needed to be mainly our own version. And that’s what you heard.

What’s amazing is that this version allowed other tracks to emerge, some of which recall John Williams’s theme, while others are pure John Murphy, who dives into what had been done, comes out of it, and uses it beautifully throughout the film. He worked for nearly two years on this score. As many people know, it’s me who writes the basic elements of the score beforehand, so we can play it every morning on set, and that’s still what we did here. But, like the rest of the film, the challenge was to find the balance between tradition and modernity.

The rendition of the theme reminds us of Jimi Hendrix’s rendition of the American national anthem [at the Woodstock Festival in 1969], and refers to what Superman represents to the American people. How did you incorporate this notion into the film?

James Gunn: That’s what Superman’s “Bring me home” to Krypto represents. When I watched the trailer and the film, I realized that at the beginning, we had a bruised Superman, and I think that’s a metaphor for our country. I believe in the goodness of human beings. I believe that most people in this country, despite their ideological or political beliefs, are trying their best to get by and trying to be good people, despite the impression that might give from the other side. And the film talks about that.

It talks about the fundamental goodness of human beings and how it can be perceived as not being cool when some of the darkest voices are the loudest. That’s what happens when you let people believe that the Internet is the world, when it’s not. We are the world. I live in a very rural part of Georgia, and I see the kindness and beauty of people who don’t share the same political beliefs as me every day. That’s what it’s about: the film deals with the fundamental monotheism of human beings, worldwide.