Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s Superman news — comin’ atcha faster than the last son of Krypton himself. With DC Studios’ Supergirl trailer still fresh in our minds, and a solid three months having now passed since James Gunn surprise announced upcoming Superman/Lex Luthor team-up Man Of Tomorrow, today the DCU maestro decided to give Supes stans an early Christmas present. Taking to social media this afternoon, Gunn has confirmed that German actor Lars Eidinger (Clouds Of Sils Maria, Babylon Berlin) will play DC supervillain Brainiac in Superman’s next big-screen outing. Check out his post below;
Now, the news that Brainiac — an iconic comic book villain with an insatiable appetite for knowledge, destruction, and generally just causing Supes all sorts of trouble — is Man Of Tomorrow‘s big bad comes as no surprise. Not only has Gunn teased Brainiac’s DCU debut in everything from posts online to cryptic interview comments to concept art glimpsed in Superman behind the scenes clips already, but the Coluan android is also a perfect fit for Gunn’s take on the Man of Steel: he’s an iconic Silver Age supervillain, never given a chance in a live-action blockbuster joint before, who actually poses a tangible threat and challenge to both David Corenswet’s Supes and Nicholas Hoult’s Lex Luthor. And in the form of Eidinger, most recently seen in Noah Baumbach’s Jay Kelly and German psychological drama The Light, Man Of Tomorrow‘s writer-director has found an actor with a magnetic screen presence and singularly strange energy that has long-since deserved to be appreciated by a larger mainstream audience.
In terms of how Brainiac, Superman, and Lex Luthor’s paths cross and worlds collide in Man Of Tomorrow, that much is very much being kept under wraps at this point. What we do know however is that shooting is due to get underway on the movie this coming April, with Man Of Tomorrow due to fly into cinemas on 9 July, 2027. Plenty of time then for us all to hit the books and brace for a brainier breed of supervillain to make some waves in the DCU. (Top tip: Start with Geoff Johns’ ‘Brainiac’ — it’s ace!)
