While all eyes are currently on James Gunn’s Superman saga, with David Corenswet’s Man of Steel set to return in Man of Tomorrow in 2027, there is another Superman project that fans have been desperate to see move forward. Smallville may have ended 14 years ago, but for the last several years there has been talk of a new animated series continuing the story of Tom Welling’s version of Superman. However, former Lex Luthor star Michael Rosenbaum has added another disappointing update to the saga of the potential revival.
Since 2021, Rosenbaum has been teasing a new animated series which would follow Welling’s Clark Kent in his Superman guise, following the end of Smallville. However, despite having several encouraging updates over the years, there have been many more discouraging ones. While appearing at Comic Con Liverpool, Rosenbaum responded to a fan question about the proposed series’ status, saying:
“We did some artwork and Al [Gough] and Miles [Miller], who created Smallville, they’re attached. And Tom [Welling] and I wanna do it, but it’s gotta be the right time, when you pitch. And, you know, you have to make sure that the studio is wanting to do something like that right now. So, we wanna get it made, and we plan to use all these guys [the Smallville cast members present] when we get it made. But we don’t know when. We don’t know when, but it’s a work in progress.”
Will We Even See the Animated ‘Smallville’ Series?
The proposed Smallville continuation was something that seemed to be possible back in 2021. However, with James Gunn’s DCU now in full swing and the early years clearly being very Superman centric, the question whether a Smallville project would be greenlit as part of the “Elseworlds” banner is questionable. Having two Batmen is one thing, but also two prominent versions of Superman?
In 2024, Welling himself suggested that being able to do new Smallville projects fully relied on getting approval. He said at the time, “We’ve already got an artist and we have a poster, and we haven’t been able to share it yet, but Lionel Luthor is looming over everybody, and it’s really cool. We can’t do anything without DC saying we can do it, and they haven’t given us the green light, but we’re ready. Al and Miles who wrote Smallville want to write it, but it’s not our property until they say we can do it.”
It seems that some progress has been made on the project in the last year, but it really does all add up to nothing if the project doesn’t make it past Gunn and his team. It seems that Rosenbaum, Welling, Gough, and Miller are still working on the project with the hope of throwing it out into the world “when the time is right.” With so many projects of the DCU being focused on the Last Son of Krypton right now, the real question seems to be when will the time be right?
- Release Date
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2001 – 2011
- Network
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The WB, The CW
- Directors
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Mike Rohl, Jeannot Szwarc, Glen Winter, Terrence O’Hara, Whitney Ransick, Mairzee Almas, Paul Shapiro, Rick Rosenthal, David Carson, James L. Conway, Chris Long, Michael Katleman, Morgan Beggs, Allison Mack, David Barrett, Marita Grabiak, Michael W. Watkins, Philip Sgriccia, Rick Wallace, Thomas J. Wright, Todd Slavkin, Brad Turner, Charles Beeson, Craig Zisk
- Writers
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Steven S. DeKnight, Holly Henderson, Don Whitehead, Caroline Dries, Mark Verheiden, Alfred Gough, Miles Millar, Philip Levens, Jordan Hawley, Kenneth Biller, Michael Green, Drew Z. Greenberg, Geoff Johns, John Chisholm, Drew Landis, Julia Swift, Doris Egan, Tracy Bellomo, Garrett Lerner, Greg Walker, Russel Friend, Shintaro Shimosawa, Tim Schlattmann, todd helbing