Supes slips quietly back on the Warner Bros. schedule after 4 years of wrangling...?

THR don't seem to be making much of it, but I was pretty surprised to see a new Superman movie crop up in a recent presentation from Warner chairman and CEO Barry Meyer - and in the same breath as release-date news of the next Nolan Batman outing. That's pretty bloody solid company to be in for a franchise that seems to have been lost in the forest of Hollywood indecision ever since Bryan Singer's Superman Returns failed to set the world alight in 2006.

I mean, it's waaay down the page, past news of the Flash movie and a fairly predictable mid-December 2011 release for the next Robert Downey Jr. Sherlock Holmes outing...

Meyer particularly highlighted that DC Comics characters are key parts of Warner's future, mentioning a July 20, 2012 release date for the latest "Batman" film by Christopher Nolan and a holiday season 2012 "Superman" film.

Oh, okay, then. Call me nuts, but I thought a new Superman movie was, y'know, some kind of bone of contention. It's reckoned that the impending finish of the Harry Potter series, which is likely to have grossed $7.5b by its end, is going to leave room and cash not only for a new cinematic stab at Superman, but for Wonder Woman, which Meyer emphasised was still in development, in the wake of Joss Whedon's efforts on it for a year.

Must be just me that's surprised to hear this then - guess Nic Cage, Mark Millar, Whedon and all the others who have been involved in these apparently lost projects will just shrug the news off. Go figure.

THR

Is Superman dead?

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