During last night’s world premiere of the newest DC Universe Animated Original movie, Batman and Harley Quinn, at San Diego Comic Con, the new slate of DCUA films was revealed. Of the four film announced, two of them are going to be a 2-part reinterpretation of the infamous DC storyline “The Death and Return of Superman”.
First out the gate for the new animated films will be the previously announced “Gotham By Gaslight” adaptation, the popular 1989 tale that introduced us to a Victorian Era Dark Knight who was in pursuit of Jack the Ripper.
That will be followed in the spring by Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay, the first Suicide Squad movie set within the DC Universe Original Movies’ shared continuity. (Batman: Assault on Arkham, the 2014 movie that also featured the Suicide Squad was set within the Arkham video game continuity.) Hell to Pay will feature an original story and what’s promised to be an amazing, though sadly not-yet-revealed, voice cast.
Rounding out the 2018 releases will be Death of Superman, the first part of the 2-parter. Adapting the legendary story of Superman’s fatal battle with Doomsday, this will actually be the second DC Universe Original Movie to adapt the material. The first, 2007’s Superman/Doomsday, was the very first DC Universe Original Movie and greatly condensed and altered the original comic book event to fit within its 75-minute running time. The upcoming adaptation will be more faithful to the source material, much less condensed and will include many of the fan-favorite moments from the story that were left out of Doomsday.
Finally, in early 2019, look for Reign of the Supermen, the second part of the two-part adaptation. While we’ll have to wait for an official synopsis to learn all of the details, that name should be a familiar one to Superman fans and suggests we’ll be seeing the rise of the Superman alternates that took his place during the year after his death. (For those unfamiliar with the story, they were Steel, Cyborg Superman, Superboy and the Last Son of Krypton.) This part of the Death and Return of Superman was greatly simplified in Doomsday, which instead featured a single alternate Superman rather than the four we saw in the comics.
So are looking forward to a new, more fleshed out interpretation of this classic Superman tale? Which of these four new films are you most looking forward to? Sound off in the comments!
