James Gunn knows how to get fans talking. The DC Studios co-head and director of the 2025 movie schedule’s Superman, as well as its confirmed follow-up Man of Tomorrow, recently shared a cryptic script cover, and the internet lit up. The image? A medical illustration of a bifurcated human head revealing a brain. Naturally, fans zeroed in on one name: Brainiac. Could Superman’s longtime foe finally be making his big-screen debut in Gunn’s upcoming DC movie? Well, the writer-director responded to all those fan theories.
In an exclusive interview with Entertainment Weekly, Gunn addressed the buzz directly. Sort of. He didn’t confirm the villain, but he did admit he didn’t realize what would happen once he dropped that brain scan online. He explained:
While Gunn remains tight-lipped, his calculated ambiguity will undoubtedly fuel more fan theories. Brainiac has long been one of Superman’s most iconic and underused adversaries in live-action, and the illustrated brain imagery felt like more than a coincidence. If the Guardians of the Galaxy filmmaker wasn’t hinting at the classic alien AI, he definitely knew what he was doing by posting that image. Check it out for yourself:
We do know some details about the upcoming film. David Corenswet will return as Big Blue, with Nicholas Hoult reprising his role as Lex Luthor. The dynamic between those two characters is at the heart of the story. In fact, the Brightburn producer told The Howard Stern Show that Man of Tomorrow would differ from Superman because it would be as much a Lex movie as it is a Superman one.
Given that information, fans are in for an interesting installment in the DCU, one that highlights two protagonists and not simply the Man of Steel. Kal-El’s dynamic with Lex is Superman is complex and intense, and it makes for one of the best elements of that film. So I’m curious to see how this all plays out, and it feels like the paradigm is about to shift in a major way.
The Slither filmmaker hinted at the need for Superman and Lex Luthor to team up against a bigger threat in the next installment of the larger Superman story moving forward. So will that “bigger threat” turn out to be Brainiac? Well, that’s not just fan service—that’s legacy storytelling.
Comics like Brainiac by Geoff Johns and Gary Frank—and even animated entries like Superman: Unbound—have explored this dynamic before. A reluctant team-up against a hyper-intelligent alien AI bent on bottling cities? Yea watch the hell out of that.