Superman, arguably the super-est of all superheroes, has had a complicated romance with the silver screen, including perhaps more downs than ups. With that being said, Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel was fairly well received and there were hopes that the film would reignite the comic’s franchise potential.
Well, if the rumors are to be believed, a planned sequel is currently in a holding pattern and no one knows when (or even if) it will be cleared to land.
Sources have told Den of Geek that Man of Steel 2 is on “permanent hold,” which — if interpreted literally — would mean that the film will never see the light of day. According to those same sources, however, the project is not dead — at least not yet.
We don’t have a lot to go on at this point, but it seems like the takeaway is that Warner Bros. is choosing to focus on ensemble projects, rather than standalone Superman movies. Remember, Henry Cavill’s Kryptonian is set to appear in Batman Vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice (March 25, 2016), Justice League Part One (2017) and Justice League Part Two (2019), not to mention that the actor has also been busy with other projects like The Man from U.N.C.L.E.. There simply aren’t a lot of slots in that schedule, and the studio may have gone to school on The Avengers and decided that films with more than one superhero are a bigger draw and thus the safer bet.
Whatever the case may be, it seems Superman will have to share the screen with other heroes for the foreseeable future. Maybe it’s just us, but — in a world where everything is a franchise — the guy with the “S” on his chest deserves his own series of films. Hopefully this one makes it out of purgatory and onto the big screen sooner rather than later.
