Thirteen years ago today, Zack Snyder launched the DCEU, and he just marked the anniversary with a Man of Steel post that doubles as a quiet flex.
On June 14, 2013, Man of Steel hit theaters and kicked off Snyder’s DC universe with Henry Cavill’s Superman.
To mark the date, Snyder posted a stylized Man of Steel poster of young Clark Kent in the cape, captioned with Jor-El’s line: “In time they will join you in the sun.” He set it to “Sent Here For A Reason” from Hans Zimmer’s score.
It’s an origin image — where it all began — and the fans noticed immediately, flooding the comments with “13 years” and “#RestoreTheSnyderVerse.”
A Loaded Caption
“In time they will join you in the sun” is Jor-El telling his son that humanity will eventually rise to meet him.
Paired with the image of young Clark first discovering who he is, it’s a beginning-point message, fitting for an anniversary, but also loaded given everything happening around Snyder and DC right now.
This continues a recent run of DCEU posts from Snyder that fans have been dissecting for meaning, from “The League United” to multiple Henry Cavill Superman images.
Snyder Doubles Down On The Anniversary
Snyder didn’t stop at the poster. On the exact day of the anniversary, he followed up by posting the original Man of Steel trailer, captioned: “13 years ago today, the world was introduced to The Superman.”
If the poster was the tease, this was Snyder explicitly marking the date, and the post quickly racked up nearly 49,000 likes.
The standout reaction didn’t come from a fan, but from a key Snyder collaborator. Larry Fong — the cinematographer behind Snyder’s Watchmen, 300, Sucker Punch, and Batman v Superman — commented simply: “Best version ever.”
That’s a meaningful endorsement coming from someone who helped shape the visual language of Snyder’s DC films, and it cuts right to the heart of the SnyderVerse argument: for a large portion of the audience, and for many who worked on these movies, Cavill’s Superman remains the definitive take.
The fan comments escalated right along with it, ranging from “THE Superman” and “Best version ever” to more pointed calls like “Sell Snyderverse to Netflix” and “Zack at this point just buy creator rights to Man of Steel.” The hunger for more Cavill Superman, 13 years on, hasn’t cooled in the slightest.
13 Years Later, The Box Office Still Holds Up
Here’s where the anniversary becomes more than nostalgia.
Man of Steel grossed $670 million worldwide in 2013 — $291 million domestic and $379 million international.
Adjusted for inflation, that worldwide haul is nearly a billion in today’s dollars at $964 million. That’s a number modern superhero movies would kill for.
And it’s the comparison to the current era that really lands.
The Foreign Audience Gap Is Staggering
James Gunn’s Superman (2025) finished its run at roughly $618 million worldwide, considered a domestic success, but a notably soft international performer. Its overseas total landed around just $256 million.
Compare that to Man of Steel‘s international take, which sits around $545 million when adjusted for inflation. That’s roughly double the global audience Gunn’s reboot pulled.
Gunn himself addressed the gap in a Rolling Stone interview, blaming “anti-American sentiment around the world right now” and claiming Superman “is not a known commodity in some places” the way Batman is.
But that “explanation” comes off more as an excuse as it runs into a problem: Snyder’s Man of Steel, featuring the same “not-so-globally-known” Superman, pulled nearly double overseas. The character wasn’t the ceiling, and the international audience was clearly there for the taking, but Gunn missed out.
This is something we’ve been covering for a while: Snyder’s DCEU has a massive foreign audience and real staying power, the kind of global reach the current DC films haven’t matched. Even 13 years on, Man of Steel out-earned a brand-new Superman movie overseas by a 2-to-1 margin.
Snyder drove that point home on the anniversary itself, posting a Hindi Man of Steel poster for his India fans that exploded past 150,000 likes, outperforming every English-language post he shared.
Why Man Of Steel Still Matters
Put it in context. Gunn’s Superman was the highest-grossing superhero movie of 2025, but only because the competition stumbled.
Marvel’s Captain America: Brave New World, Thunderbolts, and The Fantastic Four: First Steps were all viewed as underperformers, following the earlier disappointments of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and The Marvels.
Against that backdrop, a 13-year-old Snyder film quietly outgrossing the new one overseas isn’t just trivia. It’s the entire argument SnyderVerse fans have been making, that there’s a global audience for Cavill’s Superman that was never fully tapped.
And as we’ve been reporting, that argument may be gaining traction behind the scenes, with the Paramount-WBD deal in motion and our insiders saying a SnyderVerse return is in active discussion.
For now, Snyder is marking the anniversary the way only he can with an image, a Zimmer cue, and a caption that has fans reading between the lines. Thirteen years later, Man of Steel still gets the conversation going.
Henry Cavill and Russell Crowe are also reteaming for the new Highlander.
