James Gunn Confirms More Casting News For 'Superman: Legacy'

By Brian Richards | DC Movies | July 12, 2023 |

By Brian Richards | DC Movies | July 12, 2023 |

Last month, it was announced that David Corenswet and Rachel Brosnahan were cast to play Superman/Clark Kent and Lois Lane in the upcoming Superman: Legacy, writer/director/co-CEO of DC Studios James Gunn’s upcoming film which will not only serve as a reboot of Superman, but will officially launch the new and largely rebooted DC Extended Universe for DC Studios and Warner Bros. Discovery.

Yesterday afternoon brought another announcement on who we can expect to see in Superman: Legacy. In an exclusive report by Vanity Fair correspondent Anthony Breznican, actors Edi Gathegi, Isabela Merced, and Nathan Fillion have joined the cast of Superman: Legacy, which was also confirmed on Twitter by James Gunn himself.

As to who these three actors will be portraying onscreen?

Edi Gathegi (who has starred in the films Gone Baby Gone, X-Men: First Class, Twilight, and The Twilight Saga: New Moon) will play Michael Holt, a.k.a. Mister Terrific, who possesses genius-level intelligence that allows him to immediately learn and retain any complicated skill that he studies, and which makes him the third-smartest man on Earth. He is also a polymath, a polyglot, and is equipped with T-Spheres, which are electronic spheres capable of enabling flight for their user, projecting holograms, linking to computers, and can also be used as weapons by emitting electric charges and explosions, or as Phantasm-style flying projectiles (minus the razor-sharp blades that instantly cause death). This won’t be the first appearance of Mister Terrific in live-action, as the character was featured on the CW series Arrow, where he was portrayed by Echo Kellum, and was known as Curtis Holt instead of Michael Holt.

Isabela Merced (who has starred in the films Sicario: Day of the Soldado, Dora and the Lost City of Gold, the HBO Max remake of Father of the Bride, and the Hulu film Rosaline, which can no longer be seen on Hulu, because Hollywood is hell on earth for people who create art for a living) will play Hawkgirl. Though it remains a mystery as to which version of Hawkgirl she will be, since three women have carried that mantle: Shiera Sanders Hall, Shayera Hol, and Kendra Saunders. Whichever version of Hawkgirl we’ll be seeing onscreen, her abilities include flight (due to the feathered wings that have grown out of her back), mastery of armed and unarmed combat (her mace that is made of Nth metal from her home planet of Thanagar is her main weapon of choice), immortality via reincarnation, superhuman strength, enhanced senses, and healing factor.

Last but not least: Nathan Fillion (who has starred in the series Firefly, Castle, The Rookie, and Two Guys, A Girl, and a Pizza Place) will play Guy Gardner, a.k.a. Green Lantern. Like all other members of the Green Lantern Corps, the intergalactic law enforcement agency of DC Comics, Gardner (who is known to be impulsive, hotheaded, and not always the easiest person for his fellow Green Lanterns to get along with) possesses a Green Lantern power ring, which is controlled and operated by the user’s willpower, and is capable of enabling flight for its user, as well as generating powerful constructs, such as shields, force fields, or even weapons like oversized fists, sledgehammers, or rocket launchers. This will be Guy Gardner’s first appearance in a live-action DC film, though the character (played by Matthew Settle) appeared in a pilot for the unaired series Justice League of America, and Finn Wittrock was cast to play Gardner in a Green Lantern series for HBO Max by writer Seth Grahame-Smith before it ended up being scrapped completely.

As expected, this casting announcement resulted in numerous responses from fans on social media. Some of them were excited about Gathegi’s casting as Mister Terrific, largely because they were hoping that his appearance in the upcoming superhero film would turn out to be much more satisfying than his role as Darwin in X-Men: First Class, which has been lambasted since its opening weekend because of this scene in which Darwin is brutally killed by Sebastian Shaw (played by Kevin Bacon).

Although Darwin’s mutant power is reactive evolution, meaning that he is fully capable of surviving nearly anything that happens to him, fans (and Twitter users who hope to go viral by stealing tweets, and making the exact same jokes as other Twitter users) have been holding a severe grudge against X-Men: First Class ever since, as evidenced by a “Remember when X-Men killed the one guy who couldn’t die?” tweet appearing on Twitter at least every single week.

Others were curious and hopeful about discovering which version of Hawkgirl that Merced would be portraying in the film. But the most divisive response to this casting news was about Fillion being cast as Guy Gardner. “Nathan Fillion is great, but … he’s too old.” “So wait, Nathan Fillion can play Guy Gardner in his fifties, but Henry Cavill is too old to continue playing Superman?” “Why the hell is James Gunn hiring someone who’s not only a Joss Whedon apologist, and who admitted with his whole-ass chest that he’d work with Whedon again if he could, even after everything we now know about him, but someone who was always being an a—hole to Stana Katic on the set of Castle?”

There have also been some complaints from fans that this film already has too many superheroes in it who risk taking focus and attention away from Superman in his own film. Other fans have stated how hypocritical it is that Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice got plenty of vitriol for introducing members of the Justice League in that film instead of having them appear in solo films first like how the Marvel Cinematic Universe did with The Avengers, but no one seems to be saying the same thing about these characters (along with members of the superhero team The Authority, if those rumors prove to be true) being introduced in Superman: Legacy.

Production for the film is expected to begin in January, even though the WGA strike is still in effect, and the possibility of a SAG-AFTRA strike seems very likely, all because studio executives think it’s cute to not only act like Lex Luthor, but to also brag about it to the press. So don’t be surprised if production for Superman: Legacy, as well as its originally scheduled release date of July 11, 2025, ends up getting delayed.