Jerry O’Connell Talks Justice League: Apokolips War and the End of the Road for His Superman

Jerry O’Connell returns to the role of Superman in this week’s Justice League Dark: Apokolips War, a film that brings to a close the nearly decade-long DC Universe of animated feature flms, in which O’Connell has voiced the Man of Steel a number of times. The hero has come through death and resurrection with O’Connell but even in that context, there’s a whole different level to the universe-endangering, world-altering consequences of Apokolips War, which pays off some of the longest-running threads from the Justice League, Teen Titans, Suicide Squad, and Justice League Dark movies in part by mirroring the first film in the continuity: Justice League: The Flashpoint Pardox.

As in the film adaptation of Geoff Johns and Andy Kubert’s Flashpoint comics, the heroes are facing Darkseid — and as in Flashpoint, the heroes are pulled from their comfortable environs and cast into a terrible situation. One hero forced to deal with a new normal is Superman who, up to this point, had remained pretty positive in spite of anything the multiverse threw at him.

“That’s all Warner Brothers Animation,” O’Connell told ComicBook.com. “They always figure out a new and inventive way to tell not only Superman’s story, but to tell everyone’s story. It’s why some of the most inventive, creative stuff, when it comes to superhero stuff, is coming out of Warner Brothers Animation. They’re a really inventive group of people. It’s so fun and it’s so fun to play as an actor. It really challenges you. You’re not just going in and playing a deep voiced Superman and a nerdy Clark. You’re really pushing it. It’s really cool.”

And while Apokolips War marks a finale of sorts for the current stories — and we already know that O’Connell won’t be the Man of Steel in Superman: The Man of Tomorrow this summer — the Stand By Me and Jerry Maguire actor says he would happily step back into the role anytime Warners has need of him.

“I would do it in a second,” O’Connell said. “I might be a little long in the tooth to be playing Superman these days. I was a much younger man when I started playing him. Now I’m only going to play Jor-El. I’m going to play his dad. I’m going to play Clark’s dad, Jonathan.”

Justice League Dark: Apokolips War is available today on streaming video on demand platforms. It will be available to buy on DVD and Blu-ray on May 19.