James Gunn’s superman has kicked off the new DC movie universe with a bang, and is now being followed up by, man of tomorrowReady to Bring Out the Big Guns: A new report suggests that Superman and Lex Luthor will team up to fight one of DC Comics’ most famous superpowers in the 2027 film.
The Wrap reports that Brainiac will be the big threat that will force out Lex Luthor (who, after his imprisonment). supermanThe climax, when he teams up with Rick Flag, Sr.) and Superman to defeat their enemies in the new film, finds himself in a more serious prison. Introduced in comics during the Silver Age of 1958 action comics #242, Brainiac is a Coluan, a highly intelligent, green-skinned alien race capable of surviving for centuries, who was first introduced as a curious collector who used advanced technology to miniaturize and capture entire cities for his research and collection – including Krypton’s capital Kandor before the planet was destroyed.
Although Brainiac has been reworked extensively over the years since his introduction as a techno-biological, mentally enhanced dictator, he has been a mainstay of the Superman comics and other adaptations, but he has yet to have a major presence in the live-action DC films.
io9 has reached out to DC Studios for comment on Rapp’s report and will update this post when we hear back.
It’s probably not too surprising that Gunn is reportedly shaping Brainiac as a new major villain for the still-nascent DCU. The director and DC Studios co-runner recently mused that Darkseid, who previously played a major role in the DC cinematic universe envisioned by Zack Snyder, was not something he was interested in revisiting, leaving plenty of room for other major threats (like Brainiac) to emerge in future films. Additionally, fans speculated that Brainiac might man of tomorrowThe villain came after Gunn shared the first page of the film’s script on social media in September, showing an anatomical cross-section of a human head… featuring, of course, a prominent image of the brain:
#MoT 7.9.27 pic.twitter.com/aIKSFpaHff
– James Gunn (@JamesGunn) 22 September 2025
man of tomorrow It is currently expected to enter production in the spring of next year, ahead of a planned release on July 9, 2027.
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