Smallville's Tom Welling Would Play Superman Opposite Robert Pattinson's Batman

After years of resisting the idea of returning to the world of Smallville, lead actor Tom Welling said during a recent podcast interview that he would be open to the idea of playing Superman -- assuming he could do so in the world of Matt Reeves' The Batman, so that he would be paired up with Robert Pattinson's Batman as the world's finest heroes. The actor played Clark Kent on Smallville from 2001 until 2011, then returned to the role for a brief cameo in The CW's "Crisis on Infinite Earths" TV event in 2019, during which time he reunited with his onscreen Lois Lane, Erica Durance.

It's his friendship with Pattinson that motivates Welling's interest in the idea, as much or more than returning to Superman. And it sounds from his comment like he would imagine it as a brief role, a la "Crisis," not a major film gig.

"Yeah, I think that would be cool," Welling told El Mundo Geek de Ernestoneitor (via CBR). "My buddy Rob Pattinson, he is going to be the new Batman. I would love it. It would be fun to be the Superman that shows up in his movie, just because he is a friend of mine. Yeah, who knows?"

The original Smallville series may have ended with Welling becoming Superman, but ten years later, "Crisis" revealed that he had hung up his cape, given up his powers, and was now living a normal life with his wife Lois and their two daughters. Then, of course, the end of everything.

Fans upset that there weren't more costumed adventures for Tom Welling's Superman can take a little bit of solace in the fact that there were comic book follow-ups that expanded the world and saw him dressing much more, ahem, Super. Those comics were, at least as far as the minds behind "Crisis on Infinite Earths" were concerned, canon to the version they were writing (although obviously his backstory wasn't as significant as his present for the purposes of the Crisis). And there's always the chance his daughters will turn out to be something special.