James Gunn Explains Why Man Of Tomorrow Casting News Came Before Updates About The Batman Part II
We know who is playing Brainiac, but what's going on in Matt Reeves' Gotham?
Thus far, December 2025 has been pretty great for comic book movie fans. Just this past weekend, James Gunn announced the casting of Lars Eidinger in the role of Brainiac for his upcoming Superman sequel Man Of Tomorrow, and that news came on the heels of the first full Supergirl trailer arriving online plus Avengers: Doomsday teasers playing in theaters. Unfortunately, however, you can’t please every section of the fan community: if you are presently holding your breath for some kind of official reveal for writer/director Matt Reeves’ The Batman: Part II before the start of 2026, you want to just go ahead and exhale now.
As he has been known to do, James Gunn spent some recent hours on Threads responding to questions and comments from social media followers excited about what’s currently in the works at DC Studios. He addressed a number of rumors in his posts, and one specifically explains why we just got that new Man Of Tomorrow news over the weekend while things have been quiet on the Batman: Part II front. In short, he was confident that the casting was going to leak anyway, and there isn’t presently anything to announce about the next blockbuster about the Caped Crusader. The filmmaker/executive wrote,
Batman Part II is a DC Studios film and Peter and I are producers. But generally we don't have a ton of announcements about any movie that isn't even in production yet. Things like the Lars as Brainiac announcement were because we knew it was going to get out there.
For what it’s worth, there’s another logical explanation as to why we’re hearing splashy news about Man of Tomorrow before The Batman: Part II: the former is developing faster than the latter. The Superman sequel, which will see David Corenswet’s Kal-El forced to team up with Nicholas Hoult’s Lex Luthor, has been set on the release calendar for July 9, 2027, while Robert Pattinson’s return as Bruce Wayne won’t be arriving in theaters until October 1 of that same year.
The most recent major news about The Batman: Part II arrived at the very start of the month when it was reported that Scarlett Johansson was in discussions for an unspecified role in the upcoming project, but James Gunn nor anybody else involved with the project has confirmed the trade-sourced rumors. As far as the cast goes, there is expectation that the film will see the aforementioned Robert Pattinson joined by Jeffrey Wright, Andy Serkis, and Colin Farrell, all reprising their respective roles from The Batman.
With production scheduled to start on the sequel in the new year, we’ll hopefully start seeing more reports and getting more details about it soon. For now, you can use your HBO Max subscription to rewatch the 2022 movie and get yourself hyped for more stories set in that world.
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Eric Eisenberg is the Assistant Managing Editor at CinemaBlend. After graduating Boston University and earning a bachelor’s degree in journalism, he took a part-time job as a staff writer for CinemaBlend, and after six months was offered the opportunity to move to Los Angeles and take on a newly created West Coast Editor position. Over a decade later, he's continuing to advance his interests and expertise. In addition to conducting filmmaker interviews and contributing to the news and feature content of the site, Eric also oversees the Movie Reviews section, writes the the weekend box office report (published Sundays), and is the site's resident Stephen King expert. He has two King-related columns.
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