Superman Runtime Confirmed, James Gunn Denies Claim Warner Bros ‘Forced Him to Make It Shorter’

Flagship DC flick Superman has a confirmed runtime, and besides a denial from manager and DCU steward James Gunn that genitor institution Warner Bros. "forced" him to marque the movie shorter.

Superman, which hits theaters July 11, clocks successful astatine 2 hours 9 minutes inclusive of credits and post-credits, Gunn confirmed successful a station connected societal web Threads. For context, that’s 15 minutes shorter than Henry Cavill’s 2013 film, Man of Steel.

So, the comparatively brisk 2025 Superman has a batch to compression in. Following assorted trailer reveals, fans had already wondered however Superman would acceptable successful its galore broadside characters and bash them justice. Superman revolves astir a trio of characters: Clark Kent / Superman, Lois Lane, and cardinal antagonist Lex Luther. But determination are a fig of different superheroes and supervillains confirmed to appear.

All the characters revealed truthful acold successful Superman:

• Superman
• Lois Lane
• Lex Luthor
• Mister Terrific
• Guy Gardner
• Hawkgirl
• Metamorpho
• The Engineer
• The Hammer of Boravia
• Ultraman
• Rick Flag Sr.
• Supergirl
• Maxwell Lord
• Kryptonian robots, including Kelex
• Krypto
• Jonathan Kent
• Martha Kent
• Perry White
• Jimmy Olsen
• Steve Lombard
• Cat Grant
• Ron Troupe
• Eve Teschmacher
• Otis

It's worthy noting that successful Gunn's Superman, and so crossed the rebooted DCU, superheroes are a known quantity. Gunn has said helium was uninterested successful telling yet different Superman root communicative (we've had enough!), and truthful determination won't beryllium immoderate clip wasted there. Similarly, it looks similar superheroes and supervillains are portion of the nationalist consciousness, truthful Superman volition possibly walk little clip fussing implicit explaining who, what, and wherefore the likes of Green Lantern are successful town.

Ultimately, Gunn has spoken aggregate times astir the information that Superman is not an ensemble piece. “At the mediate of everything is Clark, Lois, and Lex,” helium said astatine the opening of 2025 during an Instagram Live session. “It’s astir these 3 characters.”

Still, the confirmed runtime mightiness beryllium shorter than immoderate were expecting, and Gunn himself responded to a rumor that Warner Bros. “forced” him to marque the movie shorter.

“Zero information to that,” helium said. “And they couldn't adjacent if that's thing that they wanted to. It's a DC Studios film.”

The proposition here, then, is Gunn has a grade of autonomy erstwhile it comes to steering this rebooted DCU, and decisions specified arsenic movie runtimes are his to make. Even so, you’d ideate determination is simply a grade of unit connected Superman to spell large astatine the container office, fixed Warner Bros. main David Zaslav’s established excitement astir what helium hopes it volition bash for the company’s bottommost line.

Gunn, arsenic ever, is peculiarly chatty connected societal media. Just past week the filmmaker said helium was uninterested successful “online instrumentality wars” with some Superman and Marvel’s The Fantastic Four: First Steps acceptable to travel retired successful the aforesaid month.

Wesley is Director, News astatine IGN. Find him connected Twitter astatine @wyp100. You tin scope Wesley astatine [email protected] oregon confidentially astatine [email protected].