Josh Hartnett Was Almost Superman, Now We Know What That Looked Like

The Big Picture

• Josh Hartnett was a front-runner for the role of Superman in Superman: Flyby, and a recent image shows him in costume.
• Superman: Flyby was originally conceived as a fresh take on the Superman saga with a radical retelling of his origin story, written by J.J. Abrams.
• Despite his initial potential as Superman, Hartnett passed on the role due to his fear of being typecast and wanting to maintain creative control over his career.

While Superman: Flyby never made it to the big screen, the movie’s early stages of production are still highly-discussed moments in pop culture. Among the actors considered for the role of Superman, Josh Hartnett was a front-runner when Brett Ratner was attached as director, though he ultimately passed on the project. Now Ryan Unicomb has shared an image of Hartnett in a costume test for the role, giving fans a glimpse of what Hartnett’s Superman would have looked liked.

Superman: Flyby was in development in the early 2000s, following Tim Burton‘s cancelled Superman Lives starring Nicolas Cage and preceding Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns. Unicomb’s post nostalgically notes that Hartnett “woulda CRUSHED” the role. The film, penned by Felicity and Alias creator J.J. Abrams, was slated to be a fresh take on the Superman saga. The script envisioned a radical retelling of Superman’s origin story, where Krypton doesn’t explode but instead is torn apart by civil war, impacting Earth as the conflict extends across the cosmos.

Matt Bomer eventually became a top contender after Hartnett had passed on the role because of his fear of being “boxed in” a certain type of role and that he didn’t want to be “someone else’s puppet,” before the project was scrapped by the studio altogether. Interestingly, this is not the only DC superhero that the actor is associated with. Hartnett, at one point, was in talks with Christopher Nolan for his The Dark Knight Trilogy as well but that did not work out either as Christian Bale eventually played the Dark Knight.

Who Is Playing Superman Next?

The next actor set to take on the role of Superman is David Corenswet, who will be playing the iconic superhero in the upcoming DC Studios film Superman: Legacy. The film will be directed by James Gunn. Superman: Legacy is also expected to start its production early next year as the film is eyeing a June 2025 release. The film will be skipping Clark Kent’s origin story and will in fact focus on him reconciling his Kryptonian heritage with his human upbringing.

Since passing on Superman: Flyby, Hartnett has starred in Lucky Number Slevin, Wild Horses, Penny Dreadful, Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre, Black Mirror, Wrath of Man and more. He also eventually got to work with Nolan on Oppenheimer where he played Ernest Lawrence.

Check out the image from Unicomb below. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates on Superman: Legacy.

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