Six years before James Gunn’s Superman flew into theaters as the first release in his and Peter Safran’s updated DC Universe, the filmmaker released another movie about the Man of Steel. The film, now streaming on Netflix as part of the streamer’s December 2025 arrivals, grossed $33 million against a $6 million budget, far lower than Superman’s $616 million box office haul, and earned a 57% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes.
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That forgotten Superman movie is Brightburn, Gunn’s 2019 superhero horror film directed by David Yarovesky and written by his brothers, Brian Gunn and Mark Gunn. The movie joined Netflix’s streaming platform on December 1st and centers around Brandon Breyer, a young boy of extraterrestrial origin raised by loving adoptive parents on Earth. As he nears puberty, powerful darkness manifests within him, and he begins to use his superpowers for his twisted urges.
Brightburn Is James Gunn’s Anti-Superman Movie
Brightburn isn’t technically a Superman film, but it’s impossible to ignore the similarities between the two. Both stories center around a child from another planet with incredible abilities who is raised by human parents in a small, rural American town after crash-landing on Earth. However, Brightburn reimagines the Superman origin story as a horror story, exploring a version of the character who essentially operates as an anti-Superman and who has a predestined evil path, regardless of the nurturing environment he is raised in, and it does so incredibly well.
In Brightburn, nobody is safe, and the film’s version of a young Clark Kent, perfectly portrayed by Jackson A. Dunn, fully embraces his villainous nature and shows no restraints with his powers on his quest to conquer, making everyone a potential victim. The film effectively uses its R rating to deliver on the evil Superman trope with a genuinely brutal and disturbing film that doesn’t shy away from the consequences of Brandon’s power and sadistic nature, resulting in memorable and grisly deaths and heightened stakes and fear. The movie works incredibly well both as an evil Superman story and as an intense slasher.
Gunn has never revisited Brightburn, the filmmaker sharing on Threads last year of a possible Brightburn 2 that “it’s unlikely that it will ever happen,” but he did the Superman story with this year’s Superman movie. Gunn is also working on a follow-up film, titled Man of Tomorrow, which is scheduled for release on July 9, 2027.
What’s New on Netflix?
Brightburn was part of the wave of new arrivals that hit Netflix on December 1st. Other films now streaming on the platform include A League of Their Own, Cheaper by the Dozen, the first three Kung Fu Panda movies, Pulp Fiction, and Zero Dark Thirty. Later this month, Netflix will begin streaming titles like The Northman (December 3rd), Cast Away (December 7th), and Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery (December 12th).
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Image courtesy of Lucasfilm
