Is tomorrow just another day, as the adage goes? Or is it suddenly a franchise-within-a-franchise, a special wing of the nascent DC Universe focused in hard on what all those nutty Kryptonian super-cousins have been up to? What we do know, thanks to studio boss James Gunn in a series of social media splurts, is that Tomorrow is most definitely the future. Gunn has revealed that his follow-up to Superman will be titled Superman: Man of Tomorrow, due out in 2027. Now you might think you’ve heard the title before, and that would be because you have: next year sees the release of the already announced Supergirl, which up until June was titled Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow.
What are we to make of that title? In the comics, “Man of Tomorrow” has long been one of Superman’s many sobriquets, a hopeful tagline suggesting he represents the future rather than the past. It’s cropped up in everything from old radio serials to Alan Moore’s bittersweet Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? graphic novel, and even lent its name to a 2020 animated movie. It’s a phrase that carries the weight of the best part of a century of mythology. And yet given Gunn’s online spats with Trumpian anti-immigration types – hello Dean Cain! – over what the latter saw as Superman’s overly friendly attitude towards immigrants, it’s hard not to imagine the film-maker chuckling to himself at the new title’s liberal undertones.
