James Gunn Is Sick Of All The Superman Legacy Casting Speculation
BREAKING: It seems that Peter Ustinov, the Academy Award winner for "Spartacus" and "Topkapi," has just been cast as Superman in James Gunn's upcoming feature film "Superman: Legacy."
CORRECTION: The producers of "Superman: Legacy" have just learned that Ustinov died in 2004 at the age of 82. He will not be available to play Superman. Instead, writer/director James Gunn is rumored to be in talks with performer Randy Mario Poffo, better known as the WWF wrestler Randy "The Macho Man" Savage to play Clark Kent in "Superman: Legacy." This is definitely real and not at all made up.
CORRECTION: It seems that Randy "The Macho Man" Savage passed away in 2011 at the age 58. He will sadly not be available to play Superman in "Superman: Legacy." Instead, Gunn is 100% for-real no-kidding in talks with actor Rock Hudson to play the role of Clark Kent.
CORRECTION: ...
And so on and so on and so on.
As of this writing, there have been no official talks, nor have there been contracts signed over the role of Clark Kent in the film "Superman: Legacy," a movie that is still very much in the pre-production phase. When Gunn and his producing partner Peter Safran took the reigns of Warner Bros. Discovery's many comic book properties, they more or less picked up the Etch-A-Sketch and shook it. The DC Comics cinematic continuity begun by "Man of Steel" in 2013 will run itself out with films like "The Flash," "Blue Beetle," and "Aquaman: The Lost Empire." After that, Gunn announced that he will launch a new continuity with a film called "Superman: Legacy," which he will also direct.
And no, Gunn said in a recent interview on Inside of You with Michael Rosenbaum, no one has been cast yet, and please stop asking, thank you very much.
Ben Affleck confirmed for Superman! Not really!
As soon as James Gunn announced he would be making "Superman: Legacy," the internet was aflame with casting rumors. As of this writing, auditions are indeed being held, but there are no actors currently in serious talks to play the part of Clark Kent.
Because he has directed so many high-profile superhero projects over the last decade — Gunn made three "Guardians of the Galaxy" films as well as the DC-based film, "The Suicide Squad" — he has become quite an expert on shutting down rumors and shutting up fans. Gunn's Twitter account seems substantially devoted to addressing scuttlebutt and assuring speculators that they are quite wrong. With Rosenbaum, he talked a little bit about the actual audition process, how long it takes, and how many people he actually sees. He recalls casting "Guardians" and how he needed everything to be perfect. Gunn said:
"I felt a lot of pressure, frankly, finding, you know, casting the roles. And, you know, saying, 'God, is there even...' I know how hard — it was so hard to find Star Lord, I can't tell you. I looked at hundreds of people before Chris. [...] I saw so many people for Star-Lord, I couldn't find the right person until Chris [Pratt]. And so I was worried about that. But now that we've kind of done a lot of auditions, we're narrowing it down, we're not done yet ... By the way, there's a lot of stories out there about who we're auditioning and all these screen tests and all that ..."
Yes! Yes, there are stories! Rosenbaum, naturally, asked him which ones were true and which ones were not true.
Gunn's answer was a kind way of saying "Hold your horses."
The quest for peace
Given the number of names that have been churned out of the ineffable rumor mill, it seems that some people may actually be auditioning. That doesn't mean, James Gunn wanted to stress, that they are "in talks" or "confirmed" for anything. Yes, some of the guesses have been close. But most of them haven't been. Gunn said:
"I'm just saying it's not all true, that's for sure. Like, there are things in there that are completely false. But I can't go out there and say, 'This isn't true and this isn't true,' without saying ... you know, without going through everything. And by the way, it's not the audience's ... Right now, at this point, I don't think it's the business of anyone [but] who's screen-testing for a role. That is a very private thing."
Gunn also knows that casting rumors for a high-profile studio picture like "Superman: Legacy" activates a strange tendency in journalists and agents to report on it ... and to speculate. He even posits that the agents deliberately begin circulating rumors themselves, likely hoping to get clients into the conversation; it seems that if "everyone says" an actor is rumored to play Superman, support may appear. As Gunn described it:
"Journalists have to do what they have to do, that's their job. They're trying to get hits. They find out some things from agencies, but here's the problem. It's that they find out some things from agencies that might be true, they find out other things from agencies which are ... pushing their clients [...] 'I think my client is testing!' Yeah. So it's like, there's a lot of nonsense that comes out of it."
Actors who aren't testing might even get frustrated over the rumors. Gunn says: knock that off.
They offered me Superman
James Gunn and Rosenbaum also wanted to be careful with the way language is used during the "rumor mill" phase of production. Rosenbaum claimed that some actors like to make audition tapes, send them in (or not), and then claim that they were "being considered" for a role. No, that's not "being considered," sir, that's you sending in an audition tape. Gunn points out a similar bit of linguistic trickery when it comes to the word "offered." Executives will talk to a filmmaker and discuss what might be on the studio slate. A title or two may be mentioned, which is exciting, but that's far from "being offered" the project. That even happened recently for Gunn. He said:
"[W]e had somebody say that, we had these directors say it about a DC project. 'They offered us this project,' I'm like, 'No. No!' They met with one of our executives about potential projects to pitch on, that isn't the same as offering. So, but whatever the case, there's a lot of untruths out there."
The best attitude for a filmgoer to affect during the production of a movie is to say nothing until you've seen it. While the well-worn "anticipation game" is a large part of modern fandom, it's certainly not necessary. One can certainly enjoy a film without whipping themselves into a months-long frenzy of excitement prior to the film's release. One can get deeply involved in a movie's story and characters without knowing all the casting rumors beforehand. All of that is a game, far outside of the quality of the actual movie.
The best time to get excited about a movie is after you've seen it.