Flagship DC flick Superman has a confirmed runtime, and also a denial from director and DCU steward James Gunn that parent company Warner Bros. “forced” him to make the movie shorter.
Superman, which hits theaters July 11, clocks in at 2 hours 9 minutes inclusive of credits and post-credits, Gunn confirmed in a post on social network Threads. For context, that’s 15 minutes shorter than Henry Cavill’s 2013 film, Man of Steel.
So, the relatively brisk 2025 Superman has a lot to squeeze in. Following various trailer reveals, fans had already wondered how Superman would fit in its many side characters and do them justice. Superman revolves around a trio of characters: Clark Kent / Superman, Lois Lane, and central antagonist Lex Luther. But there are a number of other superheroes and supervillains confirmed to appear.
All the characters revealed so far in 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 worth noting that in Gunn’s Superman, and indeed across the rebooted DCU, superheroes are a known quantity. Gunn has said he was uninterested in telling yet another Superman origin story (we’ve had enough!), and so there won’t be any time wasted there. Similarly, it looks like superheroes and supervillains are part of the public consciousness, so Superman will perhaps spend less time fussing over explaining who, what, and why the likes of Green Lantern are in town.
Ultimately, Gunn has spoken multiple times about the fact that Superman is not an ensemble piece. “At the middle of everything is Clark, Lois, and Lex,” he said at the beginning of 2025 during an Instagram Live session. “It’s about these three characters.”
Still, the confirmed runtime might be shorter than some were expecting, and Gunn himself responded to a rumor that Warner Bros. “forced” him to make the film shorter.
“Zero truth to that,” he said. “And they couldn’t even if that’s something that they wanted to. It’s a DC Studios film.”
The suggestion here, then, is Gunn has a degree of autonomy when it comes to steering this rebooted DCU, and decisions such as movie runtimes are his to make. Even so, you’d imagine there is a degree of pressure on Superman to go big at the box office, given Warner Bros. chief David Zaslav’s established excitement about what he hopes it will do for the company’s bottom line.
Gunn, as ever, is particularly chatty on social media. Just last week the filmmaker said he was uninterested in “online fan wars” with both Superman and Marvel’s The Fantastic Four: First Steps set to come out in the same month.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
