A Sequel To James Gunn's 'BRIGHTBURN' Is "Unlikely" Says Producer

Director James Gunn has shared an update on plans for Brightburn 2, confirming the sequel is unlikely to happen despite what we heard last year about a follow-up moving forward. Dig it below.

James Gunn produced a flick awhile back that turned the Superman mythos on its head and made that farmers boy from Kansas into a straight up villain and fans everywhere were stoked! The film of course was Brightburn and asked the question: What if Superman was evil?

The film did fairly well at the box office pulling in an estimated $33 Million on a $6 million dollar budget. Now those numbers look big but they don’t really constitute a huge need for a sequel. We were told on the other hand, last October, that the possibility of a sequel was in the works by The H Collective/H3 Entertainment.

At the time, we learned that the production company "intends to incorporate new technology into the production process of projects it has in development, including a sequel to horror movie Brightburn." That was reportedly set to include the Metaverse, Web3, and...artificial intelligence.

Needless to say, the response to the latter being utilised wasn't good. 

Now it seems that Brightburn 2 has been all together scrapped.

Responding to a fan on Threads who asked what the deal is with Brightburn 2, Gunn said, "I mean we talked about it early on. But the rights are all f*cked up (I only own half) so it’s unlikely that it will ever happen."

Presumably, The H Collective/H3 Entertainment owns the other half, though we'd imagine the SUPERMAN helmer has the power to step in and stop them from expanding the franchise with another movie. 

Brightburn director David Yarovesky talked about what he'd like to see in a follow-up back in 2019, he told us, "I have a very canned answer for you on that front and by the nature of the answer I'm going to give you, telling you that it's canned is even more important."

"When we released Brightburn and when we exposed what we'd been working on to the world, it caught everyone off guard and people had that huge reaction to the trailer. I would say that if we were so fortunate to be able to make a sequel, I would like to repeat that and not tell anyone what we're working on and then surprise everyone with some crazy things that no one sees coming."

So, it looks like the evil superhero genre has come and gone with Brightburn but who knows what the future may hold since Gunn is now in charge of DC films.

We’ll bring you more news as we get it.

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