Mostly thanks to the fact that the guy running the United States these days is an unwitting stooge for Vladimir Putin, Russia is suddenly more culturally relevant than it has been in decades. Combine that with the fact that the public’s thirst for superhero movies is so unquenchable that even bad ones can make a ton of money, and suddenly it becomes clear that the timing is pretty good for an adaptation of Mark Millar, Dave Johnson, and Kilian Plunkett’s 2003 comic book miniseries Superman: Red Son. That seems to be what Warner Bros. is thinking, at least, as Den Of Geek claims that the studio has taken pitches from multiple directors about possibly making a live-action version of the comic.
None of this is confirmed, so it’s a very tenuous rumor at this point, but most of the “evidence” comes from a Twitter exchange between Mark Millar (who wrote Red Son) and Kong: Skull Island director Jordan Vogt-Roberts:
Millar later confirmed that he doesn’t know if Warner Bros. is actually planning a Red Son movie, as he’s never discussed the possibility with any of the people he knows at the studio, but he does believe that people there are going through the whole “back catalog of big books” in an attempt to “lure in good directors.” In other words, Warner Bros. is looking to make movies out of as many famous DC Comics stories as possible, and there’s a chance Red Son is one of them, but it might not be.
The original Red Son storyline is about an alternate reality where Superman’s spaceship crash-landed on a farm in the Soviet Union instead of in rural Kansas (and also there’s a Russian Batman for some reason and Lex Luthor isn’t as evil), and while that sort of storyline is interesting in a non-canonical comic book series, it would probably be difficult to get the average moviegoer to understand why a big-budget blockbuster isn’t about the “real” Superman.
