James Gunn Teases a Lois & Superman Relationship Fans Have Never Seen Before

DC fans will certainly expect a certainly level of tradition to be adhered to in a new Superman movie, but James Gunn’s 2025 movie is also going to put a big spin on a major element. ComicBook visited the set of the film where Gunn opened up about the many elements of Superman’s past that influenced his version. Among them of course were Richard Donner’s original movie, but also Zack Snyder’s verion, plus the DC animated universe and the classic comic All-Star Superman. To that end however, Gunn revealed that there are plenty of wholly original ideas that will be front and center in Superman, like the way his relationship with Lois Lane portrayed.

“It’s just something that’s completely us,” Gunn revealed about the on-screen couple. “The relationship between David and Rachel’s [characters] on screen is something I don’t think we’ve seen in – I hate to say stuff like this – but I don’t think it’s something we’ve ever seen any superhero movie ever.”

Gunn continued, “It’s a complicated relationship and we really get into it and there’s long scenes that are about their relationship and the way they relate and what it would be like for a person who’s this incredibly intelligent, strong-headed, stubborn, skeptical journalist, to have a relationship with someone who can lift a skyscraper.”

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When asked to clarify whether Lois Lane knows that Clark Kent is Superman in the new film, Gunn played coy, adding, “Well, we’ll see. She knows who Superman is.”

To his credit, one of Gunn’s named influences on Superman is Grant Morrison and Frank Quietly’s All-Star Superman, a comic that plays with the romance between Lois and Clark in a unique way. As the comic series begins, Lois doesn’t know that Clark is Superman, a detail he reveals to her at the end of the first issue. Their romance continues to blossom over that series, largely due to some bad news that Superman receives that gives him a…finite amount of time. It’s a unique take, but given Gunn’s phrasing above, and that this is just the start of a new DC franchise, this seems like a relationship that is in it for the long haul.

It seems possible that in Gunn’s new movie, maybe Lois will know that Clark is Superman but has to keep up the charade that her bumbling fellow Daily Planet report is actually the man of steel. Gunn dropped a unique take on this understanding of the Clark/Superman duality in our interview, adding:

“The only people that know Clark/Superman are his mom and his dad and a few others who know who he is, and those are very different things. People said all sorts of different things. They said, ‘Clark’s the real one.’ They said, ‘Superman’s the real one and Clark’s the secret identity.’ But I don’t, it says it in my script on the second page – I don’t believe either of those things. I don’t think anybody knows Superman unless they know both of him. And when they know both of him, they know the real guy. And that means not too many people.”

Superman will be released in theaters on July 11, 2025.