Henry Cavill has been the on-screen Superman for a generation of DC fans. For a decade now, Cavill has had the privilege of bringing to life one of the most iconic superheroes to ever grace comic book pages and film screens. While his flight with the character may look like a lengthy one, as he has appeared in the suit in more projects than even the legendary Christopher Reeve did, Cavill’s run as Superman has been defined by behind-the-scenes drama and indecision from WB and DC executives as they struggled to successfully launch their cinematic universe of DC characters. Because of this, Cavill never got the opportunity to play a fully realized and optimistic Superman. Despite being perfectly cast in the role, he only ever found himself leading one solo Man of Steel flick. Every other time he appeared on-screen, he was always playing second fiddle to someone else. On top of that, none of the films he was a part of would become the widely beloved comic book films that he’d hoped for.
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With the recent confirmation that the newly hired DC Studios co-chiefs, James Gunn and Peter Safran, are moving forward with a new take on the character for their developing DCU, Cavill’s reign with the Man of Steel has officially come to an end. As unceremonious an end as it is, this confirmation does have a sense of finality to it that has been missing from the numerous previous reports that Cavill wouldn’t be returning. The last ten years have been complicated for the character of Clark Kent/Superman. It’s been hard to follow what exactly has happened with Cavill’s Superman and why he was never used as often as one would think he’d be. With that, here’s a breakdown of Cavill’s history with the character and how we got here in the first place.
Casting and Man of Steel
Warner Bros.
Cavill’s first legitimate run-in with the role of Superman came in the early 2000s when he was cast in the film Superman: Flyby. That film was an origin story for Superman written by J. J. Abrams and with McG set to direct. However, when McG left the project and was replaced by Bryan Singer, the script was reworked into Superman Returns and the titular role was recast with Brandon Routh. When Superman Returns failed to relaunch the series as it was intended to, and as the Marvel Cinematic Universe began to kick off with its first slew of films in the late 2000s and early 2010s, another new rebooted Superman movie was put into development.
Zack Snyder was brought on to direct this new film, titled Man of Steel, which was written by David S. Goyer and produced by Christopher Nolan. Cavill was officially announced as the newest actor to portray Superman in January 2011, finally giving the actor his big break. Man of Steel eventually hit theaters in the summer of 2013, and while it wasn’t the massive critical and box office success that it had the potential to be, it still had a pretty respectable run. It established a foundation that was solid enough for WB and DC to decide that the film would serve as their Iron Man. Man of Steel would be the first chapter in the new DCEU franchise before it expanded into the wide DC canon and introduced all sorts of new characters. The future looked bright for Cavill, as he had stepped into what looked to be the next major franchise. DC was one of the few brands that could potentially rival the increasingly dominant films from Marvel, and Cavill was one of the central faces of it.
Batman v. Superman and the Burgeoning DCEU
Warner Bros. Pictures
Only a month after the release of Man of Steel, its follow-up film was unveiled at San Diego Comic-Con. However, to the surprise of many, the next film in the new DCEU would not be a Man of Steel sequel. Rather, it would be the crossover film Batman v. Superman. The film would speed up the growth of the DCEU by immediately introducing the latest take on Batman and pitting him toe-to-toe with Cavill’s Superman. Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice hit theaters in March 2016, and it served as the entry point for an array of new characters into the world established in Man of Steel. Ben Affleck’s Batman and Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman both played prominent roles in the film, and the likes of Jason Momoa’s Aquaman, Ray Fischer’s Cyborg and Ezra Miller’s The Flash all appeared as well.
For Cavill’s Superman, Batman v. Superman wasn’t the follow-up that some fans had hoped for. Instead of continuing his story directly from Man of Steel and seeing Cavill really embrace the optimistic and hopeful man of tomorrow that the end of Man of Steel set up, Batman v. Superman drenched the character in the same kind of dark and brooding environment that is the norm for Batman. As a whole, the movie was much more of a Batman film than a Superman film. This version of Superman wasn’t given a lot of development in the film, and then he was even abruptly killed off at the end. As a result, Cavill felt pretty underutilized in the role.
Despite, and partially as a result of, Batman v. Superman’s aggressive expansion of the DCEU, the film ended up being the first significant bump in the road for the franchise. The darker approach to the characters and heavier storytelling of the film failed to connect with audiences. While Snyder’s approach to Man of Steel and Batman v. Superman had definitely earned the series some die-hard fans, general audiences weren’t all that interested in it. What should have been a slam-dunk billion-dollar film ended up grossing just a smidge over $850 million worldwide. While those are still solid numbers, they were a sign that change was needed.
2017’s Justice League
After Batman v. Superman, WB and DC were frantically trying to adjust the DCEU that they and Snyder had built. The decision was made to shift the universe into a lighter direction that was more similar to what was being produced by Marvel. While Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman worked really well with this new direction, the re-editing of Suicide Squad as a result turned that film into a complete mess. It was with the release of Justice League in 2017, however, that the whole DCEU really began to crumble. Snyder, who was directing the film, and DC ended up parting ways midway through the film’s production. Avengers’ director Joss Whedon was brought on board to carry the film across the finish line, and the result was an under-baked superhero team-up that was an uneven and confusing mix of different ideas and tones.
While Justice League received mixed reviews, the box office for the film was a real disaster. What was supposed to be the peak of the DCEU ended up being the lowest-grossing film of the bunch yet. As for Cavill’s involvement, the character of Superman was readjusted to be more of the lighthearted and hopeful version of the character fans had been wanting for years. In terms of his performance and general involvement in the project, Cavill came out of Justice League mostly unscathed. That is, except for one noticeable area: his face.
Cavill’s refreshing performance and the new direction for the character overall were both dramatically overshadowed by what has been dubbed as “mustache-gate.” When the extensive re-shoots got underway for Justice League, Cavill was in the middle of production for Mission: Impossible – Fallout, a film in which he sports quite the impressive mustache. The issue with that was Cavill wasn’t allowed to shave his mustache to film Justice League, as that would interfere with Mission: Impossible’s production. So, Cavill had to shoot all of his new Superman scenes for Justice League while sporting a bushy mustache that would have to be digitally removed in post-production. The result was that Cavill’s face, throughout the entire theatrical Justice League film, just looks…off. The CGI to remove his burly stache was distractingly bad, and it was one of a myriad of issues that ended up dominating the entire conversation surrounding the film.
Cavill’s First Departure
Warner Bros.
Though there had been a few promising updates about a potential Man of Steel sequel in 2017, WB and DC went into a spiral following the failure of Justice League. While Kingsman director Matthew Vaughn and Mission: Impossible director Christopher McQuarrie had both pitched their own takes on a new Superman film starring Cavill, the project consistently failed to take flight. Between those failures and the cancelation of any immediate plans for a Justice League sequel, the future for Cavill’s Superman looked bleak. Nobody knew when he would get the chance to play the character again. Unfortunately, things would go from bad to worse for fans of Cavill’s Superman, as reports began circulating in 2018 that he and WB had come to an impasse and parted ways over the character, meaning he was no longer set to return as the character in any capacity moving forward.
These reports in 2018 followed similar reports that Ben Affleck was exiting the role of Batman. While neither Cavill nor WB confirmed the reports at the time, their silence on the matter spoke volumes. The reports were so widespread from the major trades that most coverage treated Cavill’s departure as fact. Without any sort of denial coming from the people involved, it seemed clear that both Cavill and Affleck had either walked away or were booted from the DC universe. This was the first major fallout to follow the release of Justice League, and DC fans began to despair that the brand they loved would not be living up to its potential anytime soon.
Years of Back-and-Forth
Following that, the DC brand and Cavill’s involvement with it entered an endless loop of excitement and disappointment. The first painful example of this was the Superman cameo at the end of Shazam!. What could have been a cool moment of interconnectivity within the DCEU turned into an irritatingly apparent instance of utter disconnect behind-the-scenes. This is because Cavill and WB could not reach an agreement over his return for the scene, which resulted in the character only appearing from the neck down on-screen, with his face noticeably hidden off-screen. It was the first time in the DCEU that Superman had appeared without Cavill, and it wouldn’t be the last. The same thing happened a few years later when Superman and several other members of the Justice League appeared in the Peacemaker finale in early 2022, with the man of steel only existing as a silhouette, while Momoa and Miller actually played ball and filmed a couple of bits for the scene.
Despite never actually appearing in any DC films or shows, Cavill kept insisting that he was still hopeful that he’d play Superman again. In 2019, he gave an update saying that “The cape is in the closet. It’s still mine” and “I’ve not given up the role. There’s a lot I have to give for Superman yet.” Then, in early 2020 reports started circulating that Cavill had signed on to appear as the character in another non-Superman DC project at some point in the future. Some people speculated that he could be playing a role in the upcoming The Flash film; however, nothing was ever confirmed. If it’s true that he was going to appear in The Flash, it’s likely that his cameo appearance in that film has been scrapped at this point. With each passing year, fans began to get even more irritated at the lack of Superman in the DC films, and the lack of concrete information about it from DC and Cavill began to become deafening.
Zack Snyder’s Justice League and Black Adam
Despite all of this unclarity about Cavill’s future with Superman, he would eventually show up in the costume again. The first instance of this would be in Zack Snyder’s Justice League in 2021. After years of lobbying from fans online, WB gave Snyder the budget he needed to finish his version of the Justice League film, which was then released direct-to-streaming on HBO Max. This new version of the film was just over four hours long, and so it included plenty of new scenes and sequences that involved Cavill’s version of Superman. It was a dream come true for fans of the character, as they finally got to see what Snyder’s original vision for the character was. Zack Snyder’s Justice League served as (or was meant to at least) a bit of closure for the die-hard fans of the Snyderverse, and it put another great performance from Cavill as Superman out into the world. It wasn’t lost on fans, however, that this reappearance of Cavill’s Superman had no bearing on the actual future for DC going forward. Zack Snyder’s Justice League was a dead end for that story, so there still was no clarity on whether or not Cavill would come back at any point.
That brings us to this year and the release of Black Adam. Star Dwayne Johnson had been talking up the potential of a Superman and Black Adam showdown for years. Fans were dying to see the man of steel return, and Johnson seemed to be promising to give that to them. Then, just before Comic-Con 2022, the internet was set ablaze by rumors that Cavill would appear during DC’s panel to announce his return to the role. When that didn’t happen, fans were immensely disappointed, and some took their frustrations out on Johnson, who even got booed on stage when he danced around a question about it. Eventually, Johnson and his team were able to convince Cavill and the WB/DC executives to shoot a small Superman cameo that could be tacked onto Black Adam as a post-credit scene.
When Black Adam was released, fans were delighted to finally see a genuine return from Cavill to the character of Superman. It felt like the ship was finally settling. This was built upon with an official statement from Cavill in which he confirmed his return to the role. In a video he released on social media, with the approval of WB and DC, he stated decisively that “I am back as Superman.” He added that the Black Adam appearance was just “a very small taste of what’s to come” and that the patience that fans had shown over the years would be rewarded. Unfortunately for Cavill, those words would be quickly made untrue.
Abandoned for the New DCU
The very next day after Cavill released the proclamation of his return to the role of Superman, Gunn and Safran were hired as the co-CEOs of the newly formed DC Studios. They were given complete control over the DC brand, and they promised a fresh and new approach to DC that would finally see the brand live up to its potential. There was immediately a lot of speculation about what direction Gunn and Safran would take DC, and Gunn was promising that Superman would be a key part of the franchise moving forward. Some fans wanted them to continue to build off the established characters, such as Cavill’s Superman and Gadot’s Wonder Woman, while others wanted them to completely reboot the franchise and dump everything that has come from DC over the last ten years. While no official announcement has been made at this point, all signs are pointing toward them doing the latter.
It was just last week that the news broke that Jenkins’ treatment for Wonder Woman 3 had been shot down by Gunn and Safran, who were looking for a different approach for the new DCU. Some people suspected that news indicated that the rest of the DCEU was in danger and that a hard reboot for the franchise was imminent. That is beginning to look more and more likely. After having a meeting to discuss the future of the character, both Cavill and Gunn took to social media to share the news that Cavill is not going to be the on-screen Superman for the DCU moving forward. Gunn shared that he and Safran are prioritizing Superman and developing a new solo film, that he is writing, focused on a younger version of the character not played by Cavill. Meanwhile, Cavill confirmed the news on his Instagram with a statement thanking fans for their continued support and saying that he respects Gunn and Safran’s desire to build something new. He concluded by saying “My turn to wear the cape has passed, but what Superman stands for never will. It’s been a fun ride with you all, onwards and upwards.”
And thus, after a rocky ten-year race with the character, Cavill’s run as Superman has now, definitively, come to an end. It’s a shame that fans will never get to see Cavill really live up to his potential in the role, and it’s especially painful that the end has come right when things started to smooth out. However, it’s understandable why Gunn and Safran made the decision they did. It’s easy to see that they are wanting to build their own DCU, and in order to do so they need to make tough decisions like this. One thing that can certainly be said is that Cavill is an immense talent that has proven himself time and time again through the likes of Man of Steel, Mission: Impossible and The Witcher. He’s too big a star not to get scooped up by some other major franchise. It’s only a matter of time.
