J.J. Abrams Officially Rebooting Superman For WB With Ta-Nehisi Coates

There’ve been rumors making the rounds for years that J.J. Abrams would reboot Superman as part of Bad Robot’s first-look development deal with WarnerMedia, and today it’s become official. The word has just broken that he’s producing a new feature-length adventure for the iconic DC superhero, with journalist, author and comic book writer Ta-Nehisi Coates set to tackle the script.

While no plot details have been announced yet, and likely won’t be for a long time, the burning question on everyone’s mind is obviously going to be the identity of the lead actor. Henry Cavill’s future as Superman was the subject of intense speculation before he extended his contract, while any previous reports of Abrams getting involved with the Son of Krypton tended to focus on his preference for recasting the role.

As Joker and The Batman have shown, Warner Bros. and DC Films have no issues having multiple actors playing different versions of the same character at once, so there’s every chance that Bad Robot’s Superman pic could exist independently from the canonical DCEU, allowing Cavill to stay on as Kal-El.

However, fans have been desperate to see a Man of Steel sequel for years now, and the movie trends on a regular basis online. For whatever reason, the studio have never been interested in making it happen, but they’ve clearly got an appetite for the hero to headline more big screen adventures seeing as they’ve given Abrams’ reboot the green light.

The filmmaker is now attached to Superman, Justice League Dark and Constantine as Bad Robot double down on DC content, and it’ll be interesting to follow this one going forward, just to see how the fans react to Abrams’ involvement.