Here’s your first, weird look at David Corenswet as Superman
James Gunn shared the first-ever image of David Corenswet from his upcoming film Superman, due out July 2025
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Here’s an unexpected surprise for your Monday: James Gunn has revealed the first look at David Corenswet as Superman. To recap, Gunn and producer Peter Safran were hired as co-chairmen of DC Studios in 2022. In early 2023, the duo announced their plan for DC’s slate, including the first feature Superman: Legacy, which would be the “start of the DCU.” Gunn wrote the script and decided to direct the film, eventually dropping the “Legacy” (it’s cleaner) and gathering the opposite of a Suicide Squad with his big ensemble cast. Principal photography for the film began in February 2024; the film is due in theaters July 11, 2025.
All of that brings us to today, with the first photo of star Corenswet (Pearl, The Politician) in Superman’s signature blue and red suit. The picture is… kind of funky? At first glance, you might think the image was created by artificial intelligence. But no, Corenswet’s hands just look like that, apparently, as Gunn wrote on social media the photo “was taken on set by Jess Miglio and was entirely in-camera.” The image depicts Superman seemingly just pulling on the boots of his already-dirty suit, despite the fact that there’s a colorful, possibly planetary (?) explosion happening behind him. By all means, Clark, move at a glacial pace!
The suit bears some resemblance to Henry Cavill’s Superman costume in its slightly more muted color scheme and pebbled texture. However, this suit has more inexplicable paneling and a slight turtleneck (and, if you want to be a real creep and zoom all the way in, it looks like the red undies might be back?). It also looks way more suit-like than previous Supermen: there are creases at the shoulders where the fabric appears to bunch up, a change from other form-fitting versions of the suit that looked like a second skin. (In fairness, the older versions looked like relatively cheap latex.)
This is the first look at Superman and the first true taste of Gunn and Safran’s DC Universe, so eat it up, nerd. Yet to be seen in character are the rest of the cast, including Rachel Brosnahan as Lois Lane, Nicholas Hoult as Lex Luthor (though we have seen his bald head, so that’s a start), Skyler Gisondo as Jimmy Olsen, Milly Alcock as Supergirl, Sara Sampaio as Eve Teschmacher, Anthony Carrigan as Metamorpho, María Gabriela de Faría as The Engineer, Nathan Fillion as Green Lantern (Guy Gardner), Isabela Merced as Hawkgirl, Terence Rosemore as Otis, Edi Gathegi as Mr. Terrific, or Wendell Pierce as Perry White. Phew! In other words, there’s still a lot to come from Superman in the year-plus wait for the film to actually hit theaters. Gunn has been sharing a lot of behind-the-scenes and teases from set on his social media, so you can expect to be fed with plenty of content between now and then. This is just the first bite!
58 Comments
What is the appetite for the DCEU reboot? I just don’t see how anyone could get excited for… wait. is that Nathan Fillion as Green Lantern? Forget everything I said. I wanna see it.
Huh. I was expecting something less muted.
Want less muted? How ballsy would it have been for this “not a Superman origin story” to just dive straight into this:
HAH!
I really don’t know what to make of the text in the bottom right. Like isn’t that kinda self evident?
I like it! The symbol looks great, the trunks are back. Everything looks good. It does look like he’s already been in battle from the scorch marks. I’m picturing him just now getting home and some alien starts attacking the city and he’s like, okay, fine, back to work I guess.
Looks good to me. I’m sure it will look even better on film, in motion. I love that Gunn introduced it with a fairly mundane every man imagery as opposed to Snyder’s dramatic deifying.
To be totally fair, Snyder’s suit was introduced with that shot of Cavill crouching in front of a bank vault wall, which wasn’t anything to do with the deifying imagery.
But it certainly wasn’t mundane. Hey, I’m not a Snyder hater, he got a lot right in his DC movies – but they were mostly beautifully stupid with a major lack of humanity.
Good lord, I remember that shot, specifically seeing it in an Entertainment Weekly piece about the (then-upcoming) Man of Steel.
Yep it was around September 2011 as I recall
i guess i prefer this to the weird super bright, all-white background shots we used to get when they’d premiere a new superhero suit. i do think it looks way overdesigned, but i’ve come to expect that.
I actually get some Tyler Hoechlin vibes from it too, especially the boots, but also the shades of red & blue.
Hoechlin’s suit is probably the best Superman suit so far. Not spectacular, but nothing offensive about it and not bad part really sticks out. Not too padded, not too shiny, bit of a nod to the New 52 design but doesn’t have the dumb collar (and got rid of the New 52 cape style after appearing on Supergirl). Season 1 of Superman and Lois it was a little too padded, but they got it pretty much perfect after that.
I gotta’ give a shot out to Routh’s suit from Crisis on Infinite Earths. It’s essentially perfect from a construction standpoint to me. Routh played a version of Superman from the Kingdom Come storyline, so I don’t mind the black belt or the swoop “S,” but in a perfect world, I would tweak those things to make him the more traditional 90’s-era Superman and drop it into a new movie or show.Also, for what it was, I liked Henry Cavill’s suit, specifically from Man of Steel (they added more padding and tweaked some things in later movies).My favorite design in general is still the classic “Made by Ma Kent” trunks-and-all interpretation (below), but we live in a post-New 52 world where the “Kryptonian underwear” version exists, and as an execution of that idea, I think Cavill’s version looked great, and deserved to be in a much better movie.
I think the Routh Kingdom Come suit is great, definitely the second best of recent superman suits. But something about it is just slightly off. I appreciate the red trunks, but either the shape or the color is just a little wrong. Maybe if they were a little darker like the boots. (and the boots themselves look a little flimsy.) I think if this had been its own tv show, they would’ve tweaked it to near perfection, though.
Routh’s KC suit is a great midpoint between 4-color funnybook garishness and MoS textured Kevlar-ish muted. Make the tweaks you suggested and that’d do me fine.
I would tweak those things to make him the more traditional 90’s-era Superman
Me too. Specifically I’d give him the mullet back…
It looks fucking awesome you nerd. Damn these geeks writing for this site (says a 50 year old fanboy geek!) is something else.I wonder if that’s a sun eater or maybe something to do with Brainiac?
Dude looks like he just rolled out of bed and is doing everything possible to delay having to deal with the deadly eye-beam that’s destroying Metropolis.
And he just remembered that he had FOOTBALL PRACTICE that afternoon, so Metropolis had better not take all day to be saved.
He just entered the speed force, so all that stuff is freeze-framed behind him. Gunn’s trying to win another MTV stand up and cheer audience award.
Dude also needs to do his laundry. He’s going to wear that out? Come on Superman, you’re supposed to be a role-model.
It looks pretty similar to the Cavill suit, but that’s not a bad thing, because costume design wasn’t the issue with the Snyderverse.That said, I’m glad Gunn realized the Superman suit looks weird without red trunks and I’m glad they’re back.
“I’m getting this pebble out of my boot and if Brainiac destroys the city before I get it out, then that’s just what happens.”Clark has some real I’ve-got-two-minutes-before-I-need-to-clock in vibes here.
Every single thing about this looks like an AI-generated image. David Corenswet looks like you put Henry Cavill, Matt Bomer, and Liam Hemsworth into an image generator. Same with the Superman suit. Just toss in Cavill’s suit, the New 52 suit, the Kingdom Come suit, and the Superman and Lois suit for good measure. Even “David Corenswet” sounds like you prompted “attractive unknown white actor whose name will elicit a ‘who?!’ reaction.”
If the first time I saw this image was it popping up in my Facebook feed, I’d have 100% presumed it was some AI generated bullshit and scrolled right past it.
The first time I saw this image was on my Facebook feed, and I did think it was AI generated for a hot second.I’m actually starting to wonder if that’s a “look” companies might be trying to go for? Like, you take your real photo and then put it through some kind of filter to give it an AI sheen? I don’t know why they would, since AI images are controversial at best, but what do I know.
Even “David Corenswet” sounds like you prompted “attractive unknown white actor whose name will elicit a ‘who?!’ reaction.” Count yer blessings. Go back in time 15 years, and it’d be Sam Worthington sitting in that chair.
Sam Worthington, or Jai Courtney? Who can remember!Also funny is that Nicholas Hoult is playing Lex Luthor, and if I typed “evil Nicholas Hoult” into an AI generator, I’m pretty sure I’d get Ed Skreen. There’s literally only like, five different-looking actors in the world today.
Sam Worthington sounds like a P.G. Wodehouse character.
Needs a silly nickname. Biffy or Boffy. Something like that.
Or a silly hyphenated last name. Sam Worthington-Worthington.
He looks for all the world like Wicked Game-era Chris Isaak to me.
I like it. Especially the collar and how the cape attaches.
It really looks like the New 52 era suit, which….is generally considered one of the worst Superman redesigns?
I can’t for the life of me figure out why they would go the traditionalist route of giving him the red briefs (which I’m all for, fwiw), but then give him the awkward looking mock turtle-neck and chunky sleeves.
It seems like a costume trying to differentiate itself from the Cavill suit, which is mostly good – even if it got worse from movie to movie – but ends differentiating itself in all the wrong ways.
It’s a tactical turtleneck. A Tactleneck, if you will.
The only thing “weird” is AV Club’s need to have a take headlining how “weird” the suit is. It looks battle worn with Superman ready to head out again because of what’s going on in the background. Nothing weird about any of that.
By all means, Clark, move at a glacial pace!
Maybe he’s actually moving at super-speed but you can’t tell because it’s a still frame! You ever think about that? HUH? DO YA?
Kept reading down the comments looking for this take.Last one! Thank you. Thought I was going to have to make this argument myself.
I was going to say AVClub being AVClub on that headline but yes, that is certainly a singularly weird first impression. Grats.
Look at the veins on those hands. You know what they say about veiny hands…
Phlebotomists love them?
a death star ray is coming toward Earth, and Clark is… taking his time putting his boots on.This is “worse” than the Snyder era films allowance of several hundreds-of-casualty disasters with Superman on the job.
Counterpoint: He’s using super-speed, we just can’t tell because it’s a still image.
It’s still too early for Snyder cut fans to pretend they didn’t decide to pre-hate this. As a heads up.
lol is that you Zack Snyder?
It looks like it could be Solaris.
He’s at home, washing putting on his tights!
So he can roam around the forest looking for fights?
Of course the suit isn’t the main factor for the movie succeeding or not, but per se, this one sucks. Not only is too padded as a lot of people have already pointed, but it mantains the long trend of making it darker than it should be. Also, as a personal pet peeve, stop putting those threads and lines in the suit. For Superman’s look, the cleaner, the better. And no, the high collar didn’t work in the comics and still doesn’t work here. Only the most ardent Image/Jim Lee fan could like that shit. In fact, using the New 52 look as a template is a mistake, because that was one of the worst versions of Superman ever, and I’m counting the electric “Red and Blue” versions! High and hard collars only work for villains and characters with a fascist/authoritarian streak.Finally, as I see, one day we will get again a Superman who sports that classic smile that transmits hope, but that day isn’t today apparently…
“[G]athering the opposite of a Suicide Squad with his big ensemble cast”.“What are we, some kind of opposite of a Suicide Squad?”
The red undies better be back. This was their opportunity. Gone are the self conscious days of X-Men 2000 wearing all black. Embrace it.
I’m curious about who he’s going to Urkel up in this movie.Jimmy Olsen is probably the most obvious choice since they can have him do the idiot character and probably toss in some bumbling pratfalls. He will probably also have Superman trip around a bit while changing with some indie song playing as one of the 800 needle drops in the film.
That’s…that’s a lot of characters. James, I wanna trust ya, but maybe we can just let the Superman movie be about Superman?
Superboy and Supergirl and all that shit just waters down what we’re trying to do with the character (and didn’t really work for Shazam either)
I honestly don’t care as much about how things look and more want to know how things sound. If that John Williams score doesn’t play then I’m out.
Dude looks like he needs some air in his suit to fill it.