Brandon Routh donning the cape in Superman Returns should have been a career rocket launch, making the actor a consistent presence on the new movie release schedule. When the movie came out, he was stepping into one of the most famous roles in pop culture, becoming the first big-screen Superman after Christopher Reeve, in a movie built to honor that legacy. Though I think there’s a lot to defend about the flick, becoming a hit wasn’t meant to be for Returns. Now, an interview where he opens up about the aftermath of his take on Big Blue is going viral, with the actor recalling that he wasn’t given what he thought he had “earned.”
A clip from Michael Rosenbaum’s Inside of You podcast, where Routh discussed what happened after Bryan Singer’s 2006 DC movie, is running around the interwebs again. The actor said he expected the role to lead to something much bigger, but the offers he thought would come never really arrived. He explained:
