It’s strange to think that J.J. Abrams and Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Superman reboot had everyone fearing the worst for Henry Cavill’s short and long term future as the Man of Steel, when nobody batted an eyelid at the news Robert Pattinson, Ben Affleck and Michael Keaton would all be seen as three different versions of Batman across a pair of blockbusters that take place in entirely separate realities within the space of eight months.
Not only that, but DC Films president Walter Hamada confirmed last year that there’s going to be two distinct franchises focusing on the Dark Knight moving forward, so it stands to reason that Kal-El could be afforded the same treatment. The only main issue is that there doesn’t seem to be much interest in having Cavill return to the fold, with four years now having passed since he last suited up for Joss Whedon’s Justice League reshoots, even though at least one film remains on his contract with the studio.
However, longtime DCEU producer Charles Roven admitted that there isn’t any discernible reason why two different Supermen couldn’t co-exist at the same time, and he even cites The Flash as a direct example.
“If they’re going to go along with a filmmaker’s vision, you have to allow for multiple visions. You can’t have it any other way. Not everybody’s going to think alike. And so I think if somebody brought them a cohesive vision, it’s my understanding, and I could be wrong because I haven’t read the script or whatever, but even in The Flash thing that supposedly has multiple Batmans, it does have somewhat of a cohesive vision to the universe that’s been created since Ezra Miller has been playing the Flash.
And so, they’re not saying, ‘Never’, to anything and I like that. It’s got to work. You know what I’m saying? It’s got to work. You’ve got to be able to actually say, ‘Here’s what I’m really going to deliver and then it’s got to work’. I’m only attached to anything that’s spun off of Man of Steel. So once Henry Cavill is no longer a part of Superman, then I’m not attached to Superman. Right now, I think right now I’m attached to Justice League. I’m attached to Wonder Woman and I’m attached to The Suicide Squad.”
Roven is a Warner Bros. and DC Films veteran having produced Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy, Man of Steel, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Suicide Squad, both takes on Justice League, Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman duology and James Gunn’s upcoming soft reboot The Suicide Squad, so he’s in a much better position to comment than the majority of folks. Whether it happens or not is ultimately up to the studio, though, but fans have made it perfectly clear they want to see Cavill’s Superman at least one more time.
