The rumors are true. Superman and Lex Luthor are set to face off against one of the Man of Steel’s greatest foes in the new movie Man of Tomorrow…and it’s one who’s never graced the big screen before. Brainiac, the super-intelligent extraterrestrial android, is set to menace Earth in the follow-up to this summer’s high-flying hit Superman; Man of Tomorrow opens July 9, 2027.
According to reports, the film will see Superman (David Corenswet) and Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) put aside their differences to face off against the Earth-shaking threat of Brainiac, the one Superman arch-foe who may have more brainpower than Luthor. James Gunn, who wrote and directed Superman and will do the same for Man of Tomorrow, has been teasing the film’s villain since sharing a picture of the script, complete with a diagram of the human brain, on social media. The film is said to not be a pure sequel to Superman, and will be as much a Lex Luthor movie as it is a Superman vehicle. The film may also see Luthor don his high-tech battle armor for the first time in live-action, as was teased in a piece of Jim Lee art that served as the announcement for the film; Brainiac, after all, is often both a physical and an intellectual menace.
Who Is Brainiac?
Created by writer Otto Binder and artist Al Plastino in 1958’s Action Comics #242, Brainiac is an android with “twelth-level intelligence” who initially resembled a bald, green-skinned alien; in later decades, he would be redesigned to be more robotic, although he has since reverted to his chartreuse-hued incarnation. Hailing from the alien planet Colu, he menaced Krypton before its destruction, shrinking the city of Kandor down to miniature size and stealing it; Superman later retrieved it, and keeps it safely in his Fortress of Solitude. He has been one of the Man of Steel’s most persistent foes, and has been adapted for the screen many times; he was played by James Marsters on Smallville, Corey Burton on Superman: The Animated Series, Michael Emerson on My Adventures With Superman, and Stephen Fry on Harley Quinn.
Brainiac almost made it to the big screen way back in 1983. The villain was originally part of the first script drafts of Superman III, Christopher Reeve‘s third big-screen outing as Superman, as were Supergirl (who eventually got her own film with Helen Slater in the role) and mischievous Super-foe Mister Mxyzptlk. Most of them were dropped for budgetary reasons, but the supercomputer that Gus Gorman (Richard Pryor) builds in the film is a remnant of the Brainiac plot.
Man of Tomorrow will debut in theaters on July 9, 2027.
via Collider