Brandon Routh: he's still Superman

There was a flurry of activity over the weekend when word leaked out that Brandon Routh had left the Superman franchise, after just one film.

Routh, who played the Man of Steel in the not-too-warmly received Superman Returns for Bryan Singer (although must admit, I quite liked it), had been said was stepping away from the series. Instead, whoever was cast to play Superman in the forthcoming Justice League movie was the one most likely to take on the big screen role too.

Since then, it’s been reported on Ain’t It Cool that Routh is, actually, still Superman, although he won’t be taking on the role in the aforementioned Justice League flick.

There’s a deeper mystery perhaps at the heart of this, though, and that’s about where the next standalone Superman film is coming from. Bryan Singer has been making the Tom Cruise Nazi-thriller Valkyrie (now shunted back to next Autumn, presumably in an Oscar grab of sorts), but we’ve heard little about Superman: Man Of Steel, a film that was originally down for a 2009 release.

Could it be, we wonder, that Singer won’t actually make the next Superman film himself? Or will Justice League smack it off the radar for the time being? Us? We hope it's Singer still in charge: just remember how much better X2 was than its predecessor...!

As for Superman: Man of Steel, though, it's all but been postponed from 2009, and we wait and see what shape the movie arrives in, potentially in the summer of 2010.