This summer, the world learned to believe a man could fly all over again with James Gunn’s Superman. One of the box office hits that made Warner Bros a force to be reckoned with in 2025, David Corenswet’s debut as Metropolis’ protector shined brightly in multiplexes. So, of course, the announcement of Superman: Man of Tomorrow for July 2027 wasn’t exactly a surprise – even if there wasn’t an officially announced villain. 

Will We See The Brainiac

Mr. Gunn still hasn’t spilled his guts on the next baddie to face off against DC Comics’ Man of Steel, but he did drop some pretty pointed hints. Take two guesses which villain people immediately thought of after hearing this during Gunn’s call-in appearance on The Howard Stern Show: 

We released the fact that we’re coming out with Man of Tomorrow … because we knew immediately where we were going. … It is a story about Lex Luthor and Superman having to work together, to a certain degree, against a much much bigger threat. And it’s more complicated than that. It’s as much a Lex movie as it is a Superman movie.

If you guessed that the co-CEO of DC Studios is hinting at a Brainiac appearance in Superman: Man of Tomorrow, then congrats! You’re a member of a pretty huge crowd, which includes myself. (Despite the fact that I think Bizarro has been perfectly set up in Superman’s seemingly innocuous post-credit scene.) Tied back to a theory I’d previously written at CinemaBlend, there’s a chance that Brainiac is already on Earth.

I mean, how else do you explain all of the language experts in the world supposedly being able to decipher the Kryptonian language so authoritatively? The last computing power of Krypton may be pulling some string on humanity, hoping to pave the way for its ascension into power. And what better threat to bring a petty billionaire and his wholesome metahuman foe together than an intelligence that could cook them both faster than you can say “Skynet?”

Then again, maybe Bizarro is the threat that’s supposedly bigger than Superman and Lex Luthor, which could also explain why Nicholas Hoult’s megalomaniac might be getting his armor on for Man of Tomorrow. We probably won’t find out any time soon, though, as James Gunn’s super sequel isn’t set to debut in theaters until July 9, 2027. So don’t go holding your breath over all of this.