Matt Bomer claims being gay cost him ‘Superman’ role
While there wasn’t a Superman movie released on the big screen between 1987 and 2006, it wasn’t for a lack of trying. Now, Matt Bomer has alleged that he believes his sexuality ended up costing him the role of the ‘Man of Steel’.
There were plenty of attempts made to relaunch the iconic superhero in between those two points, with Tim Burton and Nicolas Cage’s Superman Lives the most infamous, with Bomer finding himself in the running to play the last son of Krypton when Brett Ratner was attached to direct.
However, despite operating under the impression that he was the clear front-runner – to the point there was even a multi-picture contract on the table – things suddenly fell apart, with the White Collar star saying that his status as a gay man who’d yet to come out publicly at the time worked against him.
“I went in on a cattle call for Superman, and then it turned into a one-month audition experience where I was auditioning again and again and again,” he explained to The Hollywood Reporter. “It looked like I was the director’s choice for the role. This is a very early iteration of Superman written by J.J. Abrams, called Superman: Flyby, I think is what it was called, and it never came to light.”
Bomer even revealed he’d “signed a three-picture deal at Warner Bros” with the expectation that he’d be the studio’s Superman. The actor, who didn’t come out publicly until 2012, was then asked if he thought his sexuality influenced the studio’s decision not to pull the trigger and move forward.
“Yeah, that’s my understanding,” he responded. “That was a time in the industry when something like that could still really be weaponized against you. How, and why, and who, I don’t know, but yeah, that’s my understanding.”
In the end, Superman: Flyby didn’t end up happening with or without Bomer. Ratner dropped out to be replaced by McG, who then dropped out himself before the reboot was ultimately reworked from the ground up and eventually flew into cinemas as Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns with Brandon Routh in the title role.
Bomer clearly didn’t let the experience dissuade him from ever playing Superman, though, with the actor finally getting his chance in 2013 when he voiced Clark Kent and his costumed alter-ego in the animated feature Superman: Unbound, almost a decade after he’d auditioned for the part in live-action.
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