Deadline has just delivered news that is making a lot of comic fans (and movie fans) quite happy this morning with news The Dark Knight helmer, Christopher Nolan, will mentor development of a new Superman movie at Warner Bros. On top of this news the site adds their brief statement from yesterday is indeed true and David Goyer and Nolan’s younger brother Jonathan Nolan are working on the script to Batman 3 based on an idea from Chris.
The report also makes clear Nolan is not likely to direct the next Superman film and that it won’t be a continuation of Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns, but an all new franchise.
Deadline’s insider tells them, “Bryan [Singer] or Brandon [Routh] are not completely out of it yet. But Warner Bros doesn’t have a handle yet on it, either. [Producer] Jon Peters is trying to make something happen since he stands to benefit financially. But [the studio] need to hear a great story that makes sense.”
As far as what direction the new Superman film would go, that too is unclear, but another source told the site, “We know what we don’t want to do. But we don’t know what we want to do. We learned a lot from the last movie, and we want to get it right this time.”
The rights to the Superman franchise will be in question very soon as in 2013, the Jerome Siegel heirs along with the estate of co-creator Joe Shuster will own the entire original copyright to Superman. So basically Warner Bros. had better do something to make the estate happy should they want a crack at the franchise when it falls in the hands of the Siegels and Shusters.
I wonder if Warner Bros. will use this opportunity to go down darker paths with Superman as was insinuated back in August 2008 when Warner Bros. Pictures Group President Jeff Robinov said, “We’re going to try to go dark to the extent that the characters allow it… the plan is just to reintroduce Superman.” That quote caused me to make the following poster, perhaps it wasn’t too far off.
