Superman and Lex Luthor will team up against uber villain Brainiac in “Man of Tomorrow,” TheWrap has exclusively learned.
Production on the film is set to kick off in Atlanta in April. “Man of Tomorrow” will be released on July 9, 2027.
Since the announcement of “Man of Tomorrow,” fans have suspected that Brainiac would be the film’s eventual foe. There are multiple indicators that point to this, chief among them the fact that the movie follows a temporary alliance between Superman and Lex Luthor.
With a rivalry as deep as theirs — and a hatred as all-consuming as Luthor’s — it would take something significant to get the duo to bury the hatchet and work together, even temporarily. Such a team-up is hinted at during a climactic scene in “Superman,” when Corenswet’s Man of Steel tells Hoult’s Luthor that he hopes “for the sake of the world” that Luthor uses his own humanity for good.
Gunn addressed this aspect of the plot in a press conference for the finale of “Peacemaker” Season 2. When TheWrap asked the DCU architect what kind of threat could get Lex, who ends “Peacemaker” in a fairly cushy position, to team up with his greatest enemy, Gunn cheekily answered by simply saying, “A pretty pronounced one.”
“Lex Luthor is mostly concerned about Lex Luthor,” Gunn said. “So we’ll see what threatens Lex Luthor.”
Brainiac certainly fits the bill, as the supervillain’s intelligence rivals Lex’s own thus making a compelling case for the super-smart Luthor to team up with the super-strong Superman. Gunn further teased Brainiac as the film’s villain when he posted the front page of the “Man of Tomorrow” screenplay, with an image of a human skull with an exposed brain present on the cover.
Audiences likely also expected Brainiac to be present in “Man of Tomorrow” for the simple fact that the villain’s been a long time coming. You’d be hard-pressed to find a Superman fan who doesn’t rank the hyper-intelligent Coluan alien among the Man of Steel’s greatest foes — he’s likely the most popular Superman antagonist not named “Lex Luthor.” Despite this fact, Brainiac has yet to appear as the primary villain in a live-action “Superman” movie (unless we’re really stretching to count a sentient computer in “Superman III”), getting overlooked on numerous occasions for Lex, General Zod and even Doomsday.
The fact that Brainiac remains such an integral aspect of Superman canon despite lacking a big-screen adaptation speaks to the lasting popularity of the character. Created by Otto Binder and Al Plastino, the villain first appeared in 1958’s “Action Comics #242” — making him even older than Superman mainstays like General Zod and Kara Zor-El’s Supergirl.
This story introduced the green-skinned alien Brainiac, who travels space with a white monkey-like creature named Koko, shrinking cities and bottling them for his own keeping. In the same story, Superman discovers that Brainiac bottled the Kryptonian capital Kandor (with his father’s college roommate as one of its captives) before Krypton itself was destroyed.
The character of Brainiac would greatly evolve over the years, becoming a much more menacing threat than his original Silver Age conception while still maintaining some of the villain’s essential components. In most interpretations, Brainiac is a green-skinned, bald, world-conquering foe of Superman’s who rivals the Man of Steel’s strength with a massive wealth of intelligence. Brainiac (or Vril Dox of the planet Colu) is a cyborg who roams the universe looking to dominate and expand his knowledge base, often possessing the ability to transfer his consciousness into new bodies to preserve his own life.
The Bottle City of Kandor also remained an integral element of the Superman mythos, with the Man of Steel often taking care of the civilization as he searches for a way to safely restore it to full size. This allows Kandor to represent both Superman’s loneliness (with his home civilization bottled up as a reminder of the life he never had) and an example of challenges even Superman cannot overcome. Kandor likewise has ties to Supergirl, with her parents in some continuities becoming residents of Kandor for a time.
Despite not being depicted in live-action films, Brainiac has appeared in a number of high-profile DC projects over the years, including shows like “Superman: The Animated Series,” “Smallville” and “Krypton,” as well as video games such as “Injustice 2” and “Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League.”
In comic books, the character is often returned to for a number of high-profile storylines, chief among them Geoff Johns and Gary Frank’s 2008 storyline “Superman: Brainiac.” This story, which takes place from “Action Comics #866” to “#870,” is one of the most renowned Superman tales to date, making Brainiac a menacing, terrifying threat in an epic, blockbuster comic.
