The Arrowverse almost had a very different path for Tyler Hoechlin’s Superman as The CW star opens up about the initial plans for his journey with Krypton’s last son.
On the latest episode of Inside of You with Michael Rosenbaum, Hoechlin went into detail about how his Arrowverse spinoff, Superman & Lois, came to be, but the answer may shock long-time fans of the franchise. Initially, Hoechlin was meant to be done as Superman in the Arrowverse after the Elseworlds crossover, as he shared the following story:
I did two episodes, then I did two episodes at the end of that season. And then at one point, I went and met with Greg [Berlanti] again, and he was like, ‘Hey, would you want to come back and do the character on the crossovers?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, I had a blast! I love working with Melissa [Benoist,] I love working with Grant…’
The next meeting I had with Greg, [he was like,] ‘Do you want to do the crossovers?’ And I was like, ‘That sounds fun, yeah, I’d love to go work with everybody again. I had a great time.’ So it was three episodes, and he goes, ‘Okay, cool… well, they are telling me it’s the last time I can use you as the character. And I was like, ‘Okay, great. Dude, it was supposed to be two episodes, this will be seven now, great, awesome.’ He’s like, ‘I might even kill you!’ I’m like, ‘Do what you got to do – great, sounds great!’ That was the conversation going into Elseworlds.
So we do Elseworlds, I finish up there, and at that point, it’s been like, I want to say, maybe it’s coming up on a couple [of] years post-Teen Wolf, and I’m like, ‘You know what? I’ve had fun, I’ve done a couple [of] films, I’ve bounced around a little bit.’ I was like, ‘I want to build a community. I want to I want to know the people I go to work with all the time and I want to have a bit of a base, and so I reached out to Greg, I sent him an email and I was like, ‘Hey man, look, my life’s changed a little bit since the last time we sat down. I’m looking for something a little bit more consistent. If you’re open to something, I’d love to come in and talk to you about doing something together.’
For me, Superman’s done. Superman’s done, they’ve told him it’s the last time you can use the character on the shows. So he’s like, ‘I’d love that, come in.’ So we sit and we have a meeting and we talk, and at one point he’s like ‘Look, I think I can get Superman to happen but I need to know you’re on board before I start making those calls cuz I’m going to have to convince some people to do it.’ And I was like ‘Okay.’ So we talked about what it would look like and how it would be different, and all this kind of stuff, and I was like ‘All right.’ I was like, ‘Hey, you know what? If it looks like that, I’m down, I’m in,’ and I was walking out the door, and I heard him say to his assistant, he’s like, ‘Get Peter Roth on the phone.’
Then it was like a few months of things turning over, and then eventually, it became this thing of like ‘Yeah, this is real, we want to do this.’ And I was like, ‘All right, great, awesome!’