Superhero Bits: 'X-Men: First Class' Cast Photos, Animated Adaptation Of Frank Miller's 'The Dark Knight Returns' In The Works; Zack Snyder 'Man Of Steel' Updates

In today's superhero bits we've got two new cast photos from X-Men: First Class, a rumored upcoming animated adaptation of Frank Miller's classic Batman story The Dark Knight Returns and a whole bunch of juicy rumors on Zack Snyder's Superman reboot called Man of Steel. That's quite the all-star team. Read about all of this superhero movie news after the jump.

We'll start with the movie we're going to see first. X-Men: First Class is rapidly approaching, we're just about due for a new trailer in the next month or so, and reportedly the new issue of Total Film has these two brand new cast photos:

In the Total Film interview, producer Bryan Singer, director Matthew Vaughn and star James McAvoy talked about when sequels to the film might take place. You can read about that here. Thanks to Stark Industries (via Geek Tyrant) for the heads up on the photos.

Next is a movie that's nearing production. Zack Snyder's Man of Steel has been adding to its cast every few weeks, starting with Henry Cavill as Superman, Kevin Costner and Diane Lane as Ma and Pa Kent and Michael Shannon as Zod. Many of those scoops have been coming from a well-placed source at Latino Review and they've got a few new pieces of information.

A couple months ago they reported that Man of Steel would have a female villain and while she has yet to be officially announced, that's reportedly coming soon. A new report says the character's name is Faora and she'll be Zod's right hand woman, much as Ursa was in Superman II. They also say that Krypton won't look as you've previously imagined; it'll be more along the lines of a city planet like Coruscant in the Star Wars prequels. Finally, Jor-El, Superman's father, will reportedly appear in the film and Daniel Day Lewis was looked at for the part. Read more about each of these rumors over on Latino Review.

Finally, the most speculative superhero news of the moment. Bleeding Cool is reporting that a feature length animated version of Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns, which follows Bruce Wayne as an older man who comes out of retirement, is currently being developed. There's also a version of Batman: Year One in the works (directed by Sam Liu and Lauren Montgomery, thanks to Daily Blam) and that would come first. There's no official word on who will be writing or directing the The Dark Knight Returns, but it will supposedly be people who've worked on previous Batman animated films. Considering we'll probably never see faithful live action adaptations of these two stories, if this is true, it's exciting for Batman fans. Read more over on Bleeding Cool. We've contacted DC Entertainment for comment, but they had yet to respond at publication time.