In spite of underperforming, Brightburn made its production costs back, and James Gunn is hoping to continue the franchise.
Director David Yarovesky’s Brightburn is a horror take on the Superman origin story that was produced by James Gunn and written by Gunn’s relatives Brian and Mark Gunn. It only made a total of $31 million at the global box office, indicating that the general audience didn’t have much interest in it compared to the larger comic movie brands, and the people who saw it gave it a C+ on CinemaScore. I haven’t seen Brightburn myself, but CGMagazine’s own Chris Carter gave it a 4.5/10 review, citing an abundance of good ideas and a failure to execute on any of them. Still, since the movie had a budget of just $6 million, the story might actually get to continue.
As various sites have noticed, in the comments section of an Instagram post James Gunn gave a hopeful response to a fan asking for another Brightburn. While the fan wanted Gunn to direct the sequel himself, Gunn replied that he’s going to be busy for the next few years, as he’ll be directing a sequel to Suicide Squad and then wrapping up his Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy, “but we’re talking about the sequel,” he enigmatically concludes.
It’s unclear if and when we’ll be hearing something new from the Brightburn franchise, but the interest on the production side seems to be there. If nothing else, even if this story has been done before, it still feels like the right time for a supervillain movie to make it big.