Henry Cavill won’t be returning as Superman in the franchise’s next installment

Metrop­o­lis is heat­ing up with DC Stu­dios co-direc­tor James Gunn announc­ing he will be writ­ing the script for the new Super­man fea­ture film.

Gunn also revealed that Hen­ry Cav­ill will not be return­ing as the main char­ac­ter for the new project.

“Peter and I could­n’t be more excit­ed to have DC slots ready,” said the direc­tor-turned-label-boss. He tweet­ed Wednes­day night about work­ing with stu­dio co-head Peter Safran.

“Super­man” is also includ­ed in it. In the ear­ly stages, the sto­ry will focus on the ear­ly parts of Super­man, so the char­ac­ter won’t be played by Hen­ry Cav­ill. But I just had a great meet­ing with Hen­ry, we’re huge fans, and we’ve dis­cussed some excit­ing pos­si­bil­i­ties for work­ing togeth­er in the future. ”

Cav­ill con­firmed in a state­ment post­ed on Insta­gram that he will not be repris­ing his role as Superman.

“Sad news for every­one. Ulti­mate­ly, he won’t be return­ing as Super­man.” That’s life,” Cav­ill wrote.

“James and Peter have a uni­verse to build,” he respects. I wish them and every­one involved in the new uni­verse the best of luck and good fortune.

The Super­man news comes after a week of head­lines after Warn­er Bros. decid­ed not to go ahead with a new Pat­ty Jenk­ins-direct­ed Won­der Woman.

On Tues­day, Jenk­ins tweet­ed a lengthy state­ment regard­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a third, aban­doned project, stat­ing that he would “con­sid­er any­thing you ask me to consider.”

Short­ly after, Gunn respond­ed to Jenk­ins on Twit­ter in sup­port of the film, say­ing, “I can attest that all inter­ac­tions between Peter and you have been noth­ing but fun and professional.”

As Gunn said on Mon­day, details of the rebuilt DC Uni­verse are expect­ed to arrive in January.