Superman director James Gunn posted his reaction to an AI version of the upcoming trailer for the 2025 movie. Now, the trailer in question is not real in any way shape or form. Let’s get that out of the way. Gunn saw the “Superman” clip circulating on social media and decided to comment with three vomiting emojis. That makes sense, not only does circulating a clip like this produce misinformation that he has to waste time addressing now, but it also continues in the information ecosystem after this debunking. Quite simply, not enough people use Twitter to see this kind of correction. (This article could help in that regard, but honestly, even 20 of these might not do the trick.) As the rise of AI generated models has occurred, more and more of these fake trailers have made the rounds. Fans that don’t know what signs to look for or are just ill-informed and take them as gospel.
It’s hard to tell if the version of Superman in this clip is supposed to be David Corenswet or the former Man of Steel, Henry Cavill. The problem with a lot of these models is that they build a composite image of the subject requested based on all available information. So you could ask for the actor that’s playing Clark Kent in the 2025 blockbuster, and other older versions are still going to make their way in there. The imagery at play borrows heavily from Zack Snyder’s version of The Man of Tomorrow as well. So, there’s just a lot going on in a short clip that isn’t in any way, shape, or form real. We’re all a bit poorer for it in this case as the eventual Superman trailer is going to be special after the extended wait for a DC solo movie for their flagship character.
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Gunn has argued in the past that his projects give VFX teams time to complete the tasks at hand without resorting to shortcuts or frying themselves trying to meet a deadline. “If you do some research you’ll see my films have always taken a different approach and I’ve always given my VFX artist-collaborators time to do their jobs properly, and the respect they deserve,” Gunn previously told fans on Threads. “And the quality of the VFX in those films is uniformly great because of it (and because my friends at Weta and Framestore and ILM and more are amazingly talented).”
“This is why we wrapped on Superman a year before release and why they’ve been hard at work on many shots for months before that,” Gunn continued. “This is why we start heartily editing during the shoot. It’s why I prepare so vigorously and why we only shoot finished screenplays. And Supergirl, which I’m not directing, is being handled the same way. I can’t praise the VFX artists that help us create magic enough.”
So, no, that Superman trailer isn’t real and the full trailer is going to look better than what the mockups floating around on the Internet do right now. Fans currently speculate that the first clip from the movie might make landfall near the end of 2024. Gunn has been in post-production on Superman for a little while now. All of this is gleaned from different information sources around the Internet. For now, DC movie fans can take solace in the fact that Gunn and his team have no interest in these kinds of models. After all that controversy with The Flash, that’s probably a good thing.
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