James Gunn is shedding light on the moment he had to tell Henry Cavill he was not returning to play Superman.
During a recent appearance on the Happy Sad Confused podcast with Josh Horowitz, the DC Studios boss briefly broke down the confusing timeline that saw Cavill announce he was set to reprise the character before announcing roughly two months later that he was not moving forward in Gunn’s superhero universe.
“We were dealing with trying to figure out if we could take the job at DC Studios, and we’re talking to David Zaslav and all the legal people there, and figuring out what our deals would be,” he recalled. “And the day our deal closed, all of a sudden they were announcing that Henry was back.”
Gunn admitted that he was taken aback by the news. “I’m like, what is going on? Like, we know what the plan is, the plan was to come in and do Superman,” he said, referring to the new 2025 film that sees David Corenswet take on the titular role.
“That was really unfortunate, I’m like, this poor guy. And so Peter [Safran] and I [knew] the right thing to do is to sit down with [Cavill] and talk to him,” he said. “And we sat down, we talked to him, he was an absolute gentleman, a great guy about it. He said, ‘The only thing I ask is that I’m able to reveal it myself as opposed to it coming from you guys.’”
Of breaking the news to Cavill, the Guardians of the Galaxy writer-director said “it was really unfair to him and was a total bummer,” but there were outside influences who “wanted to take on what they wanted to do at DC and were trying to force their way and it just was never a part of the equation.”
Despite not returning to lead Gunn’s Superman, Cavill and Corenswet were in communication before the latter Man of Steel took on the iconic role.
“I had the pleasure of exchanging letters with two previous Supermans, Henry Cavill and Tyler Hoechlin. Both of them, interestingly, sort of said in their own words, ‘I’m not gonna try to give you any tips,’” Corenswet said at the film’s London premiere. “They were very encouraging and we had a lovely exchange. … I’m excited to meet them one day, it’ll be great when we can all get in a room together.”
At the tailend of their conversation about Cavill, host Horowitz asked if it’d be “too confusing” to recast the actor in Gunn’s DC Universe, to which he responded, “No, as another character? Absolutely not. I talked to him about it on that day. I would love to put Henry in something.”