James Gunn Reportedly Tried to Lure Henry Cavill Back into the New DCU
After Henry Cavill was forced to give up his red cape and James Gunn came into power in DC, he reached out to the actor to have him play a different character.
The whole Cavill-Superman story was ugly. The actor’s been playing Man of Steel for years at the point when DC got tired of him. He was virtually stripped of his role behind the scenes and denied any further projects and even cameos in other superheroes’ movies. This whole thing was kind of like a real-life shadow ban.
Then, James Gunn and Peter Safran came to power in DC, and soon after, Cavill was officially forced to quit the role of Superman. Gunn had a different vision for his version of Clark Kent, apparently, and he wanted Henry gone…just so that he could then hire Cavill’s younger lookalike, David Corenswet, for the role.
But apparently, James Gunn didn’t want to lose Cavill completely, and the initial backlash after his decision to fire the actor had him reach out to Henry and offer him a different role in the rebooted DCU he’s building. Though DC fans are used to seeing the actor wearing his iconic red cape, they were dying to learn what role was he offered.
For some reason, most fans just assumed that Gunn wanted Cavill to play…Frankenstein. Don’t ask us why people decided that, we’re as clueless as you are on this — but anyway, after being bombarded with questions about it, James Gunn had to address and debunk this rumor. He claimed that Henry was never offered the part of Frankenstein.
No one knows what role the director offered Henry Cavill, and while this is definitely an interesting topic for speculation, it doesn’t really matter. After being “d*cked around” (as Gunn described DC’s previous management’s attitude to Cavill) for so long, the actor was decidedly not willing to work for the company again.
Don’t get us wrong, Henry’s decision makes total sense: he had to go through quite a lot of humiliation from DC in the past, so it’s only fair that he refused to work with the studio again. But unfortunately, this also means the end of our dream to see Cavill play Bruce Wayne which we’ve had since he wasn’t even Superman yet.
Source: James Gunn via Twitter