Photo Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures
The trailer for Supergirl suggests that the DCU movie may achieve something that most superhero movies don’t do.
Warner Bros. Pictures and DC Studios’ Supergirl arrives in United States theaters next summer. The movie, which recently released its first teaser trailer, is directed by Craig Gillespie and sees Milly Alcock reprise her role as Kara Zor-El/Supergirl after she briefly appeared at the end of 2025’s Superman, which was directed by James Gunn.
What does the Supergirl trailer tell us about James Gunn’s DCU?
The trailer for Supergirl suggests that this could be one of the most comic-book-accurate superhero movies that we’ve had to date. The footage sees Kara say the line, “Krypton didn’t die in a day. The gods are not that kind,” which is taken directly from the Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow miniseries by Tom King and Bilquis Evely.
Additionally, the movie seems to be adapting the overall story of that miniseries — which sees Kara team up with a girl named Ruthye Marye Knoll (played by Eve Ridley) to get revenge on a villain named Krem of the Yellow Hills (Matthias Schoenaerts), only after something bad happens to Krypto — in a way that appears accurate to the source material. Of course, there are some changes being made; Krem of the Yellow Hills has a different character design in the movie compared to the comic, for instance, and Lobo also isn’t in Woman of Tomorrow at all.
Yet, that this seemingly will tell the same storyline as the miniseries is a feat not many other DC or Marvel movies regularly pull off. Of course, both companies adapt certain things, characters, or stories from comics, but rarely do they do so in an accurate way. Superman captured the tone of some DC comics, but it’s a fully original story. And Marvel’s Captain America: Civil War, for example, is nothing like the Civil War comic. Animated adaptations of comics can frequently tend to be more accurate, but creatives involved with live-action superhero movies often have the mindset that comics are too different a medium compared to cinema and, therefore, can be straightforwardly adapted. Which doesn’t have to be the case.
Supergirl seems to be setting a precedent that could become more common in Gunn and Peter Safran’s DCU; meaning, rather than just borrowing from comics, we could be seeing more straightforward adaptations of beloved storylines. It further suggests that seeing accurate adaptations of something like Batman: Death in the Family or Kingdom Come isn’t out of the realm of possibility.
