Pre-production on the DCU’s flagship title Superman: Legacy should continue as planned, despite the WGA strike.
With the possibility of a long, drawn-out writers’ strike increasingly looking like a reality, any film projects that didn’t turn in first drafts before the deadline at the beginning of this month are now effectively frozen.
With regards to huge tentpole productions, we can’t help but wonder where this leaves the untitled (but recently announced) Star Wars project that is set to bring Daisy Ridley’s Rey character back to the franchise. The last we heard, Steven Knight was penning a rewrite of that project with the aim to get it into cinemas by Christmas 2025. Unless he really got his skates on, a strike could now delay that project by months, a slowdown that Lucasfilm simply can’t afford given that it was already very much up against the clock to make that 2025 spot.
One big blockbuster project that has squeezed through the gate is James Gunn’s Superman: Legacy. That’s pretty important too: as the latest DC Universe’s first release, Warner Bros will have been desperate to not add any further delays to its DC superheroes relaunch. With Marvel Studios’ superhero offerings struggling a little of late (although this week’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 – also directed by Gunn – looks set to break that unhappy streak), there’s already a feeling among some that superhero movie may have hit their peak. With that in mind, Warner Bros certainly won’t want the release of Superman: Legacy to be any later to the party than it already is.
Thankfully for the studio, according to The Wrap, Gunn turned in a draft of the film’s script just before the deadline to down tools came in. With a script in place, preproduction work on the film continues, including casting.
In other Superman news, Gunn also confirmed this week that the ‘Elseworlds’ take on the character is still very much alive, with Ta-Nehisi Coates’ take on the Man of Steel believed to be a period take featuring a Black version of the character. As far as we know though, that is just one project which will be paused for the duration of the strike. We’ll bring you more on Superman: Legacy as we hear it.
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