Superman is being influenced by Smallville! James Gunn has revealed how the iconic series led to one major change in his upcoming reboot of the hero.
James Gunn has never exactly been quiet about his connection to the show Smallville. It’s a series that almost every comic book fan with a fully-formed frontal lobe at the time loved, and likely still loves to this day. Heck, Gunn is even friends with Michael Rosenbaum, who played Superman’s arch-enemy in the show, Lex Luthor!
And with James Gunn now set to release his own Superman movie, fans have been wondering just how much influence Smallville will have on the project. The director has admitted that the movie’s main influences come from the golden age of comics and the Christopher Reeve films, but that doesn’t mean the hallmark young adult show couldn’t have had some pull on his mindset.
How Smallville Changed James Gunn’s Superman
James Gunn actually tipped his hand on how the series may have influenced Superman in a recent chat with ComicBook.com. The director was asked why the iconic LexCorp was renamed to LuthorCorp in the reboot, to which he laid the inspiration for that decision directly at the feet of Smallville, even if it wasn’t the only reason he decided to go for the change.
“When I was making this movie, I really was taking lots of different stuff from comic books, TV shows and movies- and I’m a Smallville fan. It was LuthorCorp in Smallville. And so, it is that. But it also let the door…first of all, most people don’t name their corporations after their first names, so I believed it more, in terms of that. Also, it leaves the door open for, was his father, in any way, ever apart of this, or his mother.”
So often, a reboot of an iconic franchise chooses one point in the series’ timeline and uses that as the fulcrum for their project. It seems as though James Gunn is taking a much different approach to Superman, taking inspiration from all across the character’s history to find what makes sense for any given decision. Let’s just hope the movie doesn’t take notes from Smallville when it comes to Clark discovering his heat vision!
Superman is currently scheduled to hit theaters on July 11, 2025. Stay tuned for the latest news regarding the future of the DC Universe and make sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel for more content!
