James Gunn promises 'imposing' Lex Luthor in Superman

James Gunn has promised Lex Luthor will be an "imposing" villain in 'Superman'.

The 58-year-old director has promised his upcoming superhero blockbuster - which will feature David Corenswet in the title role opposite Nicholas Hoult as his arch-nemesis - will be different to previous tales about the comic book hero as he's developed a villain who is genuinely scary and will leave fans fearing for Superman's fate.

Speaking on the 'Happy Sad Confused' podcast, James said: "I don’t think we've ever seen the Lex that Nick is. Nick is, he's imposing. You go, 'Oh, f***, poor Superman.' That's the thing we never see, and not in film.

"Sometimes in the comics you go, 'Oh, Superman is f*****,' because Lex is so smart and good at what he's doing. But in the movies you're going, 'Lex is about to get f*****.' You see now where Lex is, he's not the person you want to have against you."

And the filmmaker admitted he's taken further inspiration from the Silver Age, during which Superman's powers seemingly had no limitations, when it came to making the film.

He teased: "I don't think we've ever seen the big science fiction Silver Age Superman aspects that we have in our movie. And we've never seen...you know, you'll see it when the movie comes out, but we've never seen this specific part of Superman's life."

The DC Studios boss recently promised 'Superman' will be "pretty family-friendly".

Speaking about the DC Universe as a whole with MovieZine, he said: “Everything's going to be totally different.

“We have something that's relatively serious like ‘Superman’ and then something that's relatively comedic like ‘Peacemaker’ all in the same universe. [Or] something very adult, like ‘Peacemaker’ [and] something pretty family-friendly like ‘Superman’.”

The ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ filmmaker added he was glad DC Comics had such a wide array of characters and themes because it allowed the movie studio to “tell a bunch of different stories” for different audiences.

He explained: “They've told stories that were more family-orientated, stories that were more adult-orientated, dark stories, light stories. I think for us, we just want to tell a bunch of different stories.”

But the director insisted DC were trying to avoid repetition in their filmography because he had gotten “a little sick” of superhero movies being so similar.

He said: “A lot of those different stories are going to be in the DCU.

“I think that to be able to tell different kinds of stories is kind of what makes things fun. One of the things I've gotten a little sick of is all these stories being relatively the same.

“I'm trying to step outside of that. We at DC are trying to step outside of that.”