A dog is a Man of Steel’s best friend. Director James Gunn on Tuesday shared the first official look at Krypto the Superdog in 2025’s Superman movie, showing Kal-El’s canine companion on the moon alongside David Corenswet’s Superman. The Super-Pet — who is inspired by Gunn’s rescued dog, Ozu — appears to be a photo-realistic CGI creation from the Oscar-nominated visual effects team behind Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, which brought to life furred friends like Rocket Raccoon and talking dog Cosmo.
See the first look at Superman‘s Krypto in the image below.
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“Krypto arrives on screens in Superman this summer,” the DC Studios co-chief and CEO wrote on social media. “Krypto was inspired by our dog Ozu, who we adopted shortly after I started writing Superman. Ozu, who came from a hoarding situation in a backyard with 60 other dogs and never knew human beings, was problematic to say the least. He immediately came in and destroyed our home, our shoes, our furniture — he even ate my laptop. It took a long time before he would even let us touch him.”
“I remember thinking, ‘Gosh, how difficult would life be if Ozu had superpowers?’ – and thus Krypto came into the script and changed the shape of the story as Ozu was changing my life,” Gunn continued. “What better time to debut the not-so-good-good-boy Krypto than #AdoptAShelterDog Month. Btw, Ozu today, is, fairly often, a very good boy.”
Gunn hinted at Krypto’s role in Superman last year when he tweeted an image of the “S” cape-clad art department mascot dog Nora, along with images of comic books that inspired Gunn’s Superman movie (previously titled Superman: Legacy). They included 2011’s Superman issue #712, titled “Lost Boy: A Tale of Krypto the Superdog,” and Krypto’s first appearance in 1955’s Adventure Comics #210, which introduced “the superdog of Krypton” as Superboy’s super-powered pet dog.
The Kryptonian canine became a recurring character in issues of Adventure Comics and Superboy, and went on to serve as a founding member of the Legion of Super-Pets — the animal branch of the Legion of Super-Heroes — alongside other super-powered animal sidekicks like Supergirl’s Comet the Super-Horse and Beppo the Super-Monkey. Krypto starred in the animated series Krypto the Superdog and the CG-animated feature film DC League of Super-Pets, and made his live-action debut in a second season episode of the DC Universe/HBO Max series Titans.
Superman — starring David Corenswet as Kal-El/Clark Kent, Rachel Brosnahan as Lois Lane, and Nicholas Hoult as Lex Luthor — flies into theaters July 11, 2025.
