His journey, their battle, our cartoon? Fans of The WB/CW’s Smallville may get a chance to revisit the adventures of Superman and company, albeit in animated form, as a project of this scope is in talks with some key players.
While Michael Rosenbaum – who played Lex Luthor to great effect on Smallville – didn’t say the animated series was officially a go, there is a lot of support for it from the cast and crew. Speaking with Screen Rant, Rosenbaum kept details close but said, “All I could share is that it’s a great idea. We have Al [Gough] and Miles [Millar], the creators of Smallville backing us up. When it’s the right time, we’d like to go and do this; pitch to Warner Bros. It has to be the right time, and right now is not the right time,” citing the ongoing Hollywood strikes and the emergence of James Gunn as the head of DC. “When the time’s right, I think it’s something that’s a no brainer, unless they have other ideas. We’d like to do it — the whole cast would like to do it. They would voice their own character from the show, and we have a concept of what the show is.”
While far from official considering the animated Smallville series hasn’t even been brought up to the higher-ups, Rosenbaum’s update shows definite progress from previous comments by Gough, who suggested it didn’t make sense to revisit the character when he’s constantly evolving in the DC universe.
While Gough does have a good point – how many Supermans (Supermen?) do we need at once? – certainly an animated Smallville could absolutely work while James Gunn gets his own Superman movie going. It could exist in its own universe as DC establishes its “reboot”, giving fans of the original series and that scale of storytelling something to look forward to as well.
Smallville ran for 10 seasons and 200+ episodes, making it the longest-running series in the franchise ever, topping the original Adventures of Superman and Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman.
Would you be game for an animated Smallville series or is it best left where it is? Give us your take below!