THR report that so veiled in secrecy was this casting that Henry Cavill and his CAA agents only found out he had won the role this morning! A few hours before we did. Cavill, who had tried out for the role before, was apparently a top contender from day one. His closest competition came from fellow Brit thesp Mathew Goode(Ozymandiaz in Zack Snyder's Watchmen). With several other names you might recognize in the running too..
Warners and Nolan auditioned actors in Los Angeles, New York, and London in November and December, with someone in the 28- to 32-year-old range as the ideal. In addition to Cavill and Goode, among those who met or were under consideration were White Collar star Matthew Bomer, Social Network's Winkelvoss twins Armie Hammer, True Blood actor Joe Manganiello (scheduling with the HBO show was a factor) and Colin O’Donaghue, who stars opposite Anthony Hopkins in The Rite. Cavill was invited for a callback in January, where he met Snyder face-to-face for the first time, according to a source.
So there you go. Things were kept very hush hush for this one indeed. We had no shortlist(official or otherwise) prior to the casting and only recently heard Manganiello's name mentioned as definitely being in the running, with Goode and Hammer mentioned very early on and thus dismissed as mere rumor. Unsurprisingly(to most anyway)
Smallville's Tom Welling was never looked at, nor was Brandon Routh who of course played the character(pretty well imo) in Bryan Singer's
Superman Returns.
Anyway, Cavill is our man. But are there any actors from this shortlist that you would have preferred?
About The Author:
Mark Cassidy is a writer, photographer, amateur filmmaker, and Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic from Dublin, Ireland.