James Gunn on 'Foolish' Superman Briefs Debate & 'Batman 2' Script (Exclusive)

DC Universe boss and “Superman” director James Gunn sat down with “Extra’s” Jake Hamilton to dish on the new David Corenswet-led movie.

When asked why the briefs vs. no briefs debate for the Superman suit has become such a big thing, he quipped, "Because people are foolish."

James said, "I had no clue when I started this that his briefs were such a topic of conversation. I'm a Superman fan, however, I'm not always on the Reddit threads and I didn't know that when Henry Cavill didn't have briefs that so many people were so upset and so many other people thought that was a great idea, so that when we came in and all of a sudden as soon as it was announced that I was doing Superman and everybody online is saying, ‘Trunks or no trunks?’… I was shocked.”

Gunn added, “I was shocked Jim Lee, the head of DC Comics, came up to me and he said, ‘So is it going to be trunks or no trunks?’ And I was like, ‘When did this become the most important thing in the world?’ I thought it was important that I show this character as a full human being who we believe in… No, it's the trunks.”

Chatting about casting, Gunn chatted about David landing the part over Nicholas Hoult, who went on to play Lex Luthor.

“When you're casting a role, I think the genuine feeling is, ‘Oh, if you cast somebody over somebody else like they're the better actor,’ but really a lot of times casting is finding the right person for the right role,” he explained. “So, most people weren't doing anything wrong, they just didn’t fit how I envisioned this Superman to be… Nick Hoult auditioned. Sure, he's a great actor… Some might say he's better than David in certain ways, but he just didn't fit the role, and that's why he didn't he didn't get that and that's why I kept him around and asked him to be Lex.”

Gunn added, “We were mixing and matching Loises and Clarks when we were auditioning them, and so I wanted to make sure that we had that chemistry right, and the truth is Nick — who is a more controlled actor — had a really good chemistry with another Lois that was less controlled, so they were opposites. David had better chemistry with Rachel [Brosnahan] because she's a very controlled actor and David is a little bit more loose, and that creates a different type of dynamism on screen."

He also spoke about how meaningful it was to have a cameo from the late Christopher Reeve’s son Will Reeve.

James said, “I thought it was important to have the history of Superman as a part of this movie, because at the end of the day I'm not the creator of this movie. ‘Superman’ is a great collaboration of many creators and many people throughout the years, going back to Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster in 1938 and all the comic book writers and the makers of the radio serial the makers of the TV shows… and everything else, and I like to have that history as a part of it.”

Gunn continued, “So we have Will Reeve, Christopher Reeve's son, in a cameo in the movie, we have Jerry Siegel's grandsons in The Daily Planet for the entire time. We had all the great Superman comic book writers come and hang out on set and watch a scene and see everybody.”

He went on to share of Will, “We did talk a little bit about Chris because we put out the documentary [‘Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story’] together, so we talked about what that was like, the beautiful moments in that, like, you know, when his brother [Matt] took care of him in that movie and kind of replaced his father when his father passed because Matt was so young.”

James talked about a particularly emotional experience he had making the film.

He shared, “One of the greatest moments… I really shed a tear was when Jerry's grandsons read the script for the first time and we brought them over to DC… They had to read the scripts in the office, and they came out and they got on the phone with me, and they were just… I had never met them, and they were just effusive, they're like, ‘This is a Superman movie we've been waiting to see… Our grandfather would have been so proud.’ I’m going to cry now. So, that meant a lot.”

Also, for the score, Jake asked, “How do you decide whether or not a moment is worthy to bring in John Williams?”

Gunn replied, “It was a delicate balance, and we talked a lot with John Murphy and Dave Fleming, the composers, about where that would be used and I really wanted to have original score in there, which we have plenty — we have a beautiful love theme by John and all sorts of stuff — but also I wanted to use the Williams theme, but sort of reuse different pieces of it at different times break it down, bring it back up again.”

Hamilton, who loves dogs, brought up Superman’s dog Crypto, wondering, “What is that balance of we can put Crypto in danger but, like, people are going to hate this movie if anything happens to Crypto?”

James replied, “That's the great thing with being me is that I've killed so many people that people love in movies that the stakes are always there and you never know what I'm going to do, so when Crypto's in danger… you know, Crypto is in danger.”

Plus, Matt Reeves just announced he’s finished the “Batman 2” script, so Jake had to grill James for details!

When asked if he had read it yet, Gunn said, “I have not. In fact, I don't even have it yet because he's going to bring it to me today, I think.”

Jake asked what Superman will think of Batman, and he shared, “First of all, we don't know he hasn't already seen a man dressed up as a bat… I think that he'd probably see a kindred spirit in that another crazy person wearing a crazy costume, you know, with a very different intent.”