A few months back, our resident comic book movie expert (and newly crowned Game Rant editor), Rob Keyes put together an excellent report on the future of the Superman film franchise, confirming rumors that The Wachowski Brothers’ protegé, James McTeigue, was in talks to helm a reboot. Then, in August, with McTeigue still denying any firm involvement in the movie, we learned the director’s dark vision for the film.

Despite the fact that McTeigue hadn’t officially joined the film, it was beginning to feel inevitable that Superman would enter production relatively soon. Then, faster than a speeding bullet, we found out that DC Entertainment didn’t even have plans for a Superman reboot, in part due to complicated legal disputes over the franchise. Now, we have even more confirmation that Superman has stalled out thanks to an interview James McTeigue gave to MTV.

Grinding on the rumor mill… Harry over at Ain’t It Cool News is always popping up with some interesting rumors that, more often than not, prove to be true. Last time it was setting the story straight on the next Rambo movie and this time he’s going one better and calling the name of the person Green Lantern director Martin Campbell may be choosing to put on the yellow suit and purple make-up as Sinestro – none other than Jackie Earle Haley!

A few weeks back, Screen Rant’s Kofi Outlaw ran an article fantasy casting Sinestro and based on the feedback from our readers, Hugo Weaving was the favorite. Well, if you ever needed proof that Hollywood rarely pays attention to fans then this would be it. I trolled back through the comments and nowhere did anyone mention Jackie Earle Haley as a possible choice, oddly enough Dakota Fanning and Eric McCormack both made the list though.

Superman and Batman have long been the top favorites in the DC Universe – and the only things fans love more than seeing them in their respective adventures is seeing them team up to take on evil. In fact, fans love the Superman/Batman pairing so much that in 2003, DC Comics launched an ongoing Superman/Batman comic book series as a reboot of the historic series World’s Finest Comics, which ran from 1941 to 1986.

Back in the halcyon days of 1997, Tim Burton had a dream: To bring Superman to the big screen. The film, entitled Superman Lives, was supposed to star Nicolas Cage as the legendary Man of Steel. Obviously, the movie never panned out, though the rudiments of the project would eventually become 2006’s Superman Returns. For a detailed explanation of why the film never made it past pre-production (aside from the producer’s ludicrous “toy first, plot second” approach to filmmaking) check out the Wikipedia entry on the movie.

MTV recently spoke to Diane Nelson, the newly-anointed head of Warner Bros.’ DC Entertainment Inc., and picked her brain about how the new venture will affect the DC films already in the pipeline and which heroes we can expect to see onscreen in the near future. In the midst of all this talk, Nelson let a quiet bomb (no, not that kind) drop: DC Entertainment has no current plans in the works for another Superman movie.

Why is this news such a big deal? It’s a bit of a convoluted story but luckily your friend Outlaw has been keeping his eye on Superman for a minute now. Keep reading to see what Nelson’s words may mean for the cinematic future of the Man of Steel and WB/DCE.

Yesterday we found out that Warner Bros. has created DC Entertainment Inc. (DCE) to better expand the DC Comics into a multimedia brand of steel . Now comes the inevitable question of “What’s the game plan?”

MTV Splash Page posted a nice piece declaring which DC properties should be put on fast-track under the DCE banner, and this being Friday and all, I thought I’d once again do a little call-and-response on the topic (I now consider Splash Page’s Josh Wigler to be something of a pen-pal).

So in response to the call, here’s my take on the DC Entertainment venture and what paths it should be considering…

After the Disney/Marvel merger DC Comics and longtime-partner Warner Bros. had to be shaking in their boots. “The House of the Mouse” is already looking like a force that few will likely be able to reckon with.

Well, in an effort to become one of those few forces able to take on Disney/Marvel, Nikke Finke reports that Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. has launched a new division, DC Entertainment Inc., in order to better expand the DC Brand.

Marvel fanboys have already been having heart palpitations wondering what the fate of their favorite characters will be in the hands of Disney. Now DC fans can officially share in that anxiety.

Disney has purchased Marvel Comics and we’re all still trying wrap our heads around what it will mean for the future of some of our favorite comic book heroes. Well, I was in the shower last night washing my hair (TMI?) and somewhere in that shampoo veil a question occurred to me: Will Disney-Marvel try to sign Superman in 2013?

If that question has you scratching your head, allow me to catch you up on some of the Screen Rant articles you should’ve been reading(!) and break down for you why this Disney/Marvel grab for Superman is not nearly as implausible as it might seem.

Matthew Vaughn, director and producer of the upcoming rated-R comic book adaptation, Kick-Ass, really wants to helm Marvel Studio’s The Avengers movie.

Vaughn, if you remember, was director of X-Men: The Last Stand… for a short while anyway. After he took over for Bryan Singer, he quickly left which opened to door for Brett Ratner to direct the project which in my mind, is the absolute worst of the four X-Men movies.

Looking forward instead of back though, Vaughn now has directed three feature films: Layer Cake, Stardust and now Kick-Ass (which quickly earned itself an American distributor after premiering footage at San Diego Comic-Con.) Now, he wants to do another superhero flick…

Last week, Screen Rant Editor Kofi reported on the major Superman news where Warner Brothers lost possession of the rights to the Man of Steel’s origins.

The Judge had made another ruling on this decade-long court battle which stated that heirs of Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joel Schuster now own most of Superman’s early history. This obviously was another major blow to WB who found out earlier (in another ruling) that they’d be completely losing Superman come 2013.

For the film franchise, the court rulings meant that the studio needed to fast-track production of their Superman reboot plans and we reported on the rumor that James McTeigue and the Wachowski brothers would be put in charge of that task.

In case you haven’t noticed, a legal battle between DC/WB and the heirs of Superman creators Jerry Siegel  and Joel Schuster over the copyright to Superman has been raging for going on a decade now.  In recent months, a judge ruled that in 2013, the Siegel/Schuster heirs will own the full copyright to Superman – however, many of auxillary elements of character developed by DC Comics after Siegel and Schuster’s initial introduction of the character have remained on the legal battlefield. Until now:

Warner Bros. no longer has access to Superman’s origins.

Variety reports that on Wednesday, Judge Stephen Larson ruled that the Siegels now control a lot of Superman’s early history, including his brief infancy on Krypton, his parents, baby Kal-El and the whole “sent to Earth from a dying planet” storyline. The Siegels also captured ownership of early Superman comic-strips and early Superman/Action Comics issues.

Today marks the completion of a dream for yours truly: I got a chance to sit down at the table with Stan “The Man” Lee and pick his brain about everything from the state of the modern-day comic book industry to his newest project with Disney, a digital motion-comic about a time-jumping hero, appropriately titled Time Jumper.

Oh and I also got to ask the father of the Marvel Universe about the possibility of snagging a certain Man of Steel who’s going to become a “free agent” in the next couple of years…

This week, a U.S. District Court Judge made yet another ruling in the decade-long legal battle between DC/Warner Bros. and the estate of late Superman co-creator, Jerry Siegel. The latest ruling (in this convoluted case) stated that all was fair (legally at least) regarding the licensing fees WB paid to DC comics in 1999, in order to develop properties like Superman Returns and Smallville.

Here’s the part you’ll care about: while the judge found that the deals between WB and partner DC weren’t illegal, he did state that WB should’ve paid 3-4 times what they did, and that if WB doesn’t produce another Superman film by 2011, the heirs of creators Siegel and Joe Shuster (who will jointly own 100% of the rights to Superman come 2013) will be able to sue the studio to “recover their damages.”

So, will Warner Bros. try to get another Superman film into production by next year?

In an IESB interview for The Unborn, director/writer David Goyer says all DC properties are currently on hold for the time being in regards to film development. This comes as confirmation of what we’ve previously suspected.

When probed about Supermax and Justice League, Goyer had this to say.

“A lot of the DC movies at Warner Brothers are all on hold while they figure out, they’re going to come up with some new plan, methodology, things like that so everything has just been pressed pause at the moment.”

Including the two movies mentioned, Superman and Green Lantern would also be on hold. With an across the board freeze, Warner Bros. may be looking to create a cohesive DC Universe.

So we here at Screen Rant are pretty good at thinking two steps ahead of the suits in Hollywood. That is to say, we can usually predict their next move before even they know what it is.

Screen Rant writer Jamie Williams has been the all-seeing, all-knowing, Oracle of everything Superman related. For proof of his precognitive prowess, just take a look at his early prediction that Superman Returns star Brandon Routh will most likely re-don the red and blue suit for the next supes film (which is still in the pipeline somewhere).

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Mark Millar is the comic-book writer who cried wolf.

He’s had quite a reputation for fabricating info for the sole purpose of getting himself (and his comics) press. There were his claims of “knowing” that Jim Caviezel had been cast as Superman/Clark Kent in Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns and rapper Eminem “begging” him to star in Wanted. In both cases, he later admitted to making it all up.

With the news last month that Warner Brothers planned on rebooting the Superman film franchise, I thought it would be a good time to give an overall status report on everyone’s favorite big blue boy-scout. And let you folks know what’s going on…as of now, at least.

First things first, no director or screenwriter(s) have been hired nor are any in negotiations at this time. Warner Brothers is simply looking at a few candidates as potential “feelers.” Nothing more, nothing less.

ComicBookMovie is reporting that according to a number of online polls and surveys, Tom Welling “may just be heading to the big screen to portray the role that made him famous on TV.”

To which I say: Bunk.

Their source is a British site called Coventry Telegraph which has gone out and found a bunch of online polls and such where fans are overwhelmingly picking Smallville star Welling as their choice for the man to play Superman in the next movie. One poll has actually gathered 1,482 names voting for Tom Welling as their man to don the blue tights and red cape.

Well, damn, in that case I’d say it’s a lock.

After a solid year’s worth of news, rumors and flat-out Internet BS regarding the future of the Superman franchise, Warner Brothers has decided: The Man of Steel is headed for a reboot.

As WB big-cheese Jeff Robinov explained to the Wall-Street Journal:

“‘Superman’ didn’t quite work as a film in the way that we wanted it to. It didn’t position the character the way he needed to be positioned. Had ‘Superman’ worked in 2006, we would have had a movie for Christmas of this year or 2009. But now the plan is just to reintroduce Superman.”

Superman: Doomsday is NOT a Superman cartoon for the kiddies. On the contrary, this straight-to-DVD feature is pretty adult, a fact quickly established in the first ten minutes when Doomsday, the unstoppable devastator from the early 90’s “Death Of Superman” story-arc, brutally murders a team of Lexcorp researchers who unwittingly unearth him, while Lex Luthor himself puts a pistol to the head of a female assistant and blows her brains out.

…Only to tell us more of the same.

In a recent interview, Superman Returns star Brandon Routh said that the next chapter in the Superman-reboot will indeed start filming in 2009, and that a script is still being worked on as we speak (thank you WGA strike.) Let’s pray that if the filmmakers choose to dive back into the continuity established by Superman Returns, they spend the very first scene of Man Of Steel killing off that stupid ‘Son of Superman’ character. I’m seeing a Kryptonite canister placed in a child’s inhaler… (cue the sinister laughter.)

You can definitely list this one under, “What the…?!?”

Incredible Love, the first Bollywood film to be made at Universal Studios, has lined up the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger (The Terminator franchise), Sylvester Stallone (Rocky and Rambo series), Brandon Routh (Superman Returns and the upcoming sequel Man of Steel) and Linda Hamilton (also from The Terminator series) to appear.

But don’t get ahead of yourselves excited at the prospects of them in full-on action-mode blowing stuff up. They’re only walk-on parts (i.e. playing themselves).

It’s being reported that Bryan Singer won’t be returning to the Superman franchise, as he’s busy editing Valkyrie, his film opening this summer and starring Tom Cruise, and will segue into The Mayor of Castro Street, which tells the story of famed San Francisco gay activist Harvey Milk, though there’s another movie about Milk going into production soon.

Too bad; unlike others, I liked Superman Returns a lot, and was looking forward to Singer’s sequel, which he promised would be “Wrath of Khan-like,” which means he could make a killer sequel, much like Khan was.

See why Justice League is being delayed after the jump, plus news on a third Batman film.

Is this the potential plot for the Superman sequel? It does confirm two villains, and Lex is back, and this time it appears he’s in charge of a mega-corporation. That’s what I think they should’ve done with the otherwise fun Superman Returns (seriously, I liked it–except for the kid).

Okay, this is spoilerish, but rumors abound that it will likely change anyway, if this plot is true.

Is there some law of the universe I’m unaware of that requires Lex Luthor to be present in Every Single Superman Movie?

According to Variety, Kevin Spacey will be reprising his role in the next Superman movie, tentatively titled Superman: The Man of Steel (how did I miss that bit of news?).

Now don’t get me wrong, I love Spacey as an actor, but I didn’t really like his Lex Luthor in Superman Returns. I realize Bryan Singer was trying to pay tribute to the original film, but the thing I disliked in particular in the first Donner film was the stupid humor. So, I didn’t really like the borderline campy performance coaxed from Spacey in the recent film.

Variety reported that Warner Bros. has started the ponderous wheels of film development turning with the hiring of a writing team to pen a screenplay for a possible Justice League movie. I have to say that I agree completely with the commentary over at RopeofSilicon.com where they say that it is unlikely this film gets made anytime soon.

This movie would be a massive undertaking and unless the studio is off it’s nut it would have to bring in Christian Bale to play Batman and Brandon Routh to play Superman. And that’s just the start of it. Think about the budget for a film that needs to showcase at least half a dozen well-known superheroes and the level of catastrophe and villain that would be worthy of engaging them!

I last mentioned Sandy Collora’s latest short fan film World’s Finest just a few days ago. It was supposed to premiere at the San Diego Comic-Con, but big, bad Warner Bros. stepped in and squashed the viewing like a bug due to the fact that they own the movie rights to both characters.

Well now it’s available for you to watch right here.

I’ve seen it a couple of times, and I’m still processing it. My first thoughts are that Batman still rocks, but Superman needs some work. Oh, and Lex Luthor? Woah.

Overall, it seems like more of a fan-film than Batman: Dead End, but his love of the characters definitely comes through. Check it out for yourself below.