Unused Man of Steel posters just surfaced, and if you thought you’d made peace with Henry Cavill never wearing the cape again, think again. A former artist from the Zack Snyder film, Oleg Zatler, has cracked open the vault. He quietly uploaded eight unused posters to his personal portfolio, and the internet noticed immediately.
The 2013 film turns 13 later this year. That’s wild. It also explains why nostalgia keeps sneaking up on DC fans at random moments. Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel didn’t just introduce Cavill as Superman at age 30. It launched the entire DCEU experiment, back when Warner Bros. still believed an interconnected universe could be built on muted colors, operatic slow motion, and a lot of collapsing buildings.
The Man of Steel poster artwork released isn’t just of rough sketches. These were polished, studio-ready designs that simply never made it out into the world. A few ideas pop up again and again. Metropolis damaged in the fight against Zod. One poster places Cavill’s Kal-El crouched on a train car as it smashes through a skyscraper, smoke filling the skyline. Another imagines the city reduced to a crater, with Superman’s “S” emblem tearing through the ground in red fractures.
That crater concept spins off into multiple variations. Superman floating above the ruins. Superman watching from a tower. A banner-style image where the city exists inside his cape. There’s also a striking take on the first flight sequence, with Superman shooting straight up into the sky, the moment that sold a lot of people on Cavill’s version back in 2013.
One design zooms in on the House of El crest itself, with Superman framed inside the lower curve of the symbol. Another mirrors the official marketing we did get, showing Cavill standing in an icy Arctic setting near the Fortress of Solitude, long before James Gunn decided to redesign it completely for the new DCU.
The timing stings. Just when the noise around Cavill’s return had quieted down, these images and of course the images released by Zack Snyder himself, have dragged it all back again. His Superman showed up briefly in Black Adam in 2022, and for a minute, a sequel felt possible. Then Gunn and Peter Safran took control of DC Studios and wiped the slate clean.
Cavill has moved on. He popped up in Deadpool & Wolverine in 2024 and is deep into developing a massive Warhammer 40K project where he’ll star and produce. DC has moved on too.
Still, these posters feel like evidence of a road not taken. And once you’ve seen them, it’s hard not to wonder what Man of Steel 2 could’ve looked like if things had gone differently.
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