James Gunn is the sort of guy to just casually drop big news midday on social media, which is why we now know that a sequel to this year’s DCU Superman film, titled Man of Tomorrow, is officially on the way. The next film in the “Superman Saga,” this one will apparently feature the return of not just Superman but also his nemesis Lex Luthor, seen sporting his green and purple warsuit from the comics in a piece of promo art drawn by comics legend Jim Lee. It’s not a surprise that we’re getting a Superman follow-up, what with the movie clearing $600 million and garnering strong reviews, but what is a surprise is the release date.
According to Gunn’s post, Man of Tomorrow will be dropping in theaters on July 9, 2027. This two-year gap between sequels might not seem especially notable until you remember just how much sequel turnover has changed for superhero franchises over the past decade or so. With Matt Reeves’ The Batman Part II also scheduled for 2027, that will mean a five-year wait between the first film and the second (provided it doesn’t get delayed again), and when we look at the last few years of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, we haven’t actually seen multiple film installments of any individual subfranchise since the end of the Infinity Saga all the way back in 2019. So let’s take a look at why Man of Tomorrow gives us hope that superhero movies can get back to shorter downtime between sequels.
The Batman Part II and the Widening Sequel Gap
It’s been fascinating to watch more and more talk about alleged “superhero fatigue” dominate pop culture discourse at the same moment in time where the wait between superhero sequels is longer than ever. Closer to the turn of the millennium, when superhero movies were becoming more cemented as a mainstay of yearly release schedules, Sam Raimi could drop an entire Spider-Man trilogy in five years, Fox’s X-Men turned in three movies in six years, and Christopher Nolan managed to get his Dark Knight trilogy out in seven. Two to three years between sequels used to be the norm for superhero cinema, but despite the number of movies in the genre being higher than ever, the wait between sequels has grown to absurd lengths.
We’ve already mentioned the extended wait for Matt Reeves’ follow-up to his first Batman film in 2022, but this phenomenon has hit every currently running superhero series. The third film in Sony’s animated Spider-Verse trilogy, currently titled Beyond the Spider-Verse, was originally intended to drop in 2024 for a relatively quick resolution to Across the Spider-Verse’s cliffhanger ending; instead, the film has been delayed multiple times until its current release date of June 25, 2027. Marvel has it even worse: Although everything is technically part of one megafranchise under the MCU umbrella, no film property has seen multiple entries in the Multiverse Saga, which has already concluded Phases 4 and 5. Spider-Man: Brand New Day, arriving on July 31, 2026, will mark the first time that any particular MCU subseries will receive a second installment since 2019.
This is not all the result of poor planning. Between the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, delays for most movie franchises were inevitable. But even with those caveats, the deluge of superhero movies has simultaneously felt overwhelming and stilted, because we’ve seen so many setups without much of any payoff. Even for audiences eager to follow these ongoing sagas, it’s hard to keep up excitement when it feels like the next entry is always beyond the horizon. Thankfully, fans getting more of the DCU’s Superman so soon after his debut is a strong reversal of this trend.
Stay on Target
A big part of why we’re in this situation is because the movie studios that are adapting superhero IP are trying to do too much at once. During the Infinity Saga, Marvel Studios was mostly focused on the core Avengers instead of trying to launch a massive array of new characters like they are now. The DCEU struggled to cohere for many reasons, but its lack of focus and constant need to change up their plan in response to criticism were key to that series being put out to pasture. As for the Sony Universe of Marvel Characters, that collapsed under its own weight because Sony realized too late that audiences weren’t really all that interested in a slate of spin-offs about Spider-Man villains without Spider-Man…besides maybe a Venom movie or two. If the studios behind these projects were more careful with what they greenlit, perhaps we wouldn’t be in this mess.
That’s not to say that chances shouldn’t be taken on oddball properties like Guardians of the Galaxy or Aquaman, since those movies have turned out to be successful in the past. Rather, it’s that care should be taken to have a strong vision for every film that’s put into production, to build up a solid plan for where these characters are going, and to not overextend your slate with movies that will likely wind up being dead-ends. That’s how you end up with an entire Ant-Man sequel setting up a saga villain who will later be discarded, the Flash throwing in a last-minute ending change for a bizarre George Clooney cameo, or a Joker sequel that feels like nobody involved actually wanted to make it.
Superman was a hit for DC Studios; it was also the first time in a while that it felt like most people actually liked a DC movie not starring Batman (although even that opinion is not unanimous). Even with the Supergirl movie coming next year, leaving audiences starving for more Superman when the appetite is strong would have been a mistake. We’ll see what other projects come next for the DCU, since Man of Tomorrow being fast-tracked is already a big change to Gunn’s announced Chapter One plan, but for now, focusing on Superman appears to be a good bet. Hopefully, all of the other superhero franchises will also learn the value of both keeping things simple and striking when the iron’s hot.
Carlos Morales writes novels, articles, and Mass Effect essays. You can follow his fixations on Twitter.
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