Nearly 15 years after the Superman origin story ended, Smallville fans will have to wait a little longer for a potential animated continuation.
With David Corenswet making his Man of Steel debut in the new DCU‘s Superman, premiering July 11, Smallville co-creator Alfred Gough recently explained that James Gunn and Peter Safran‘s tenure as DC Studios co-CEOS has taken his project “off the table for a bit.”
“That is the thing, I think the problem with most projects in development in any studio and/or any network is regime change,” he said on Smallville stars Tom Welling and Michael Rosenbaum‘s Talk Ville podcast.
“Warners has obviously gone through a lot, and I think the fact that they are in the process of rebooting Superman again, kind of unfortunately, I think, keeps our thing off the table for a bit,” added Gough, who developed the series with Miles Millar. “Everything comes around in one form or another, I just read the other day that they are rebooting Buffy for Hulu.”
The update comes a year after Rosenbaum teased that he and Welling were developing the animated followup with the show’s original cast and creators.
Kristin Kreuk, Tom Welling, and Michael Rosenbaum in ‘Smallville’
WB / Courtesy Everett Collection
“All I could share is that it’s a great idea. We have Al and Miles, the creators of Smallville, backing us up,” he told Screen Rant. “When it’s the right time, we’d like to go and do this: pitch to Warner Bros. It has to be the right time, and right now is not the right time.”
Rosenbaum added, “We had the strike, we had a change of executives at DC — one being one of my best friends in the world, James Gunn. When the time’s right, I think it’s something that’s a no-brainer unless they have other ideas. We’d like to do it — the whole cast would like to do it.”
In addition to the upcoming Gunn-helmed Superman, a long-gestating reboot from screenwriter Ta-Nehisi Coates and producer J.J. Abrams is still technically in the works. The CW’s Superman & Lois previously ended its four-season run in December.
Meanwhile, Welling’s Clark Kent last appeared in the ‘Crisis on Infinite Earths’ Arrowverse crossover event in 2019, reuniting with Erica Durance as Lois Lane.
