It’s been an interesting week for anything related to Zack Snyder’s Justice League. First came word that HBO Max will premiere the long-discussed Snyder Cut of JL and now we hear that Henry Cavill will once again don the Superman suit after we had all spent years assuming he was done with the role.
Now, as The Wrap noted, insiders don’t expect Cavill to get his own standalone Superman film any time soon. While Cavill will play the Last Son of Krypton again, he will be doing it in a much smaller way. He will likely play the part in a brief portrayal in another DC film. It won’t be in Wonder Woman 1984 or The Suicide Squad, those films have wrapped. It won’t be in The Batman, that just doesn’t seem like a good fit. Perhaps it will be in Shazam 2! or the Black Adam film currently in development? That would make a lot more sense, especially since Cavill had a planned cameo in the first Shazam!
This is acrazy and unexpected turnaround. After the disastrous performance of Justice League, it was pretty much confirmed that Cavill would never play Superman again. That was a shame because he always did a good job, the part just wasn’t well-written for him. Zack Snyder gave us a dour, angry Superman in Man of Steel and Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice. He was lightened up a little bit for Justice League (supposedly during reshoots) but the damage had already been done by then. Cavill, as great as he did and as right as he looked, portrayed a version of Superman that didn’t appropriately capture the spirit of the character. DC and Warner Bros wanted to quickly move on from the Snyder Universe and that meant Cavill had to hang up the tights.
Cavill has always been enthusiastic about returning to play Superman again so his is good news for him. I expect this portrayal of the character, in whichever film it ends up being in, will be his last time wearing the red cape. At least he gets one more time to do it right.