Krypton TV Show Reportedly In The Works With David Goyer Attached

Man of Steel writer David S. Goyer is reportedly attached to Krypton, a new series set on Superman’s homeworld, according to Bleeding Cool.

The news and rumor site note that they’ve had an inside track on projects like Greg Berlanti’s Supergirl and Fox’s still-unannounced X-Men TV project, with stories that ran hours before the news broke wide in the trade press. That said, this one seems somewhat harder to swallow as it would be expensive to do right, embarrassing for all involved to do wrong…and of course, it’s not totally clear what David Goyer’s relationship to the Superman property is at this point after he was heavily rewritten by Argo‘s Chris Terrio on Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice.

While Gotham drew some early comparisons to Smallville, the rumored Krypton is arguably more like Gotham than Gotham ever was to Smallville, if only because the series would never include Superman, focusing instead on the House of El, Brainiac, The Eradicator, Kryptonian mythology and the like. Bertron and Doomsday would presumably be fertile ground.

Goyer’s work on Man of Steel could suggest what kind of Krypton we might see: very inspired by John Byrne’s 1986 The Man of Steel and the 15 or so years of comics that came after, with little or no tights-wearing Kryptonians and a sterile, scientific culture. Of course, it would be nearly impossible to work Man of Steel‘s Krypton into a TV budget and having just invested a ton in creating a really unique and visually striking take on Krypton, it would seem like a massive step backwards to go with something cheaper.

There are no further details on the rumored project, no timetable and no comment from Warner Bros. Television, with whom Goyer works on Constantine. At on point Russell Crowe, who played Jor-El in Man of Steel, was interested in pursuing a prequel film or even franchise, but it’s wildly unlikely he would move to TV unless it was for a presige-format miniseries a la True Detective or something.