UPDATE, August 27: One cast member only just got in under the wire. Adria Arjona filmed her role in the final weeks before this wrap, after telling Collider in July she hadn’t shot a frame.
James Gunn wrapped principal photography on Man of Tomorrow on August 26, and the two photos he posted to mark it have fans convinced they just got a look at Salvation.
The first shows Nicholas Hoult swimming in a lake, which Gunn says Hoult jumped into after the final shot of the production.
The second shows the film’s core creative team lined up on the rocks above the water, in a river gorge ringed by evergreens with a waterfall coming down the cliff face behind them.
The location is what set the comments off. It does not look like Metropolis.
What Gunn Posted
Gunn called the shoot “truly a joyful experience” and thanked his cast and crew. He identified the group in the second photo as the brain trust who sat around video village for the whole production, minus one absent member.
The shoot ran roughly four months. Cameras rolled in April in Atlanta with Trilith Studios as the production base, plus work in the United Kingdom and Cincinnati, where the Hall of Justice exteriors were shot. On August 20 Gunn marked the production passing its 85th day.
David Corenswet returns as Superman opposite Hoult’s Lex Luthor, with Rachel Brosnahan as Lois Lane, Lars Eidinger as Brainiac, Milly Alcock as Supergirl, Aaron Pierre as John Stewart (fresh off Lanterns), Isabela Merced as Hawkgirl, Nathan Fillion as Guy Gardner, Edi Gathegi as Mister Terrific, and Adria Arjona as Wonder Woman. Frank Grillo finished his Rick Flag Sr. scenes back in May but returned seven weeks later in July for more. Warner Bros. has the film dated for July 9, 2027.
Why Fans Think That Waterfall Is Salvation
Salvation is the alien planet introduced in the Peacemaker Season 2 finale, an untamed world the U.S. government repurposed as an inescapable prison for metahumans.
The season ended with Rick Flag Sr. stranding Chris Smith there as payback, alone, on a rock full of things that want to kill him.
Gunn has been explicit that the finale feeds directly into this movie. Asked on Threads how, he pointed to where Chris ends up, the escalating conflict between the government and metahumans, and the new working relationship between Flag and Lex Luthor.
So the math fans are doing is not complicated.
The last location of the entire shoot is raw wilderness with no city, no set dressing, and no sign of civilization in frame.
The actor in the water is Lex Luthor, the character who spent the Peacemaker finale getting into business with the man who runs the prison planet.
Salvation has already been flagged as the DCU’s biggest open door, and now it looks like Gunn spent his final day of production standing in it.
The Theory Is Half Right
The Salvation half holds up.
Gunn has confirmed the movie takes the concept further, and the prison-planet premise is exactly the kind of moral problem he has said interests him: a hero who believes in second chances running into a government facility built to guarantee nobody gets one. Expecting to see the place on screen is not a reach.
The Peacemaker half is where it falls apart.
Gunn was asked directly by Rolling Stone whether Man of Tomorrow resolves the cliffhanger of Chris Smith’s exile, and he shut it down flatly.
Whatever happens on Salvation in this movie, it is not the rescue mission the comments are hoping for. Gunn has also already knocked down the theory that Salvation was seeding Darkseid. Brainiac is the threat. Maybe Lex ends up there, too?
What Actually Happens Next
The movie now vanishes into ten-plus months of post-production, which on a Brainiac picture is where most of it gets built. Nothing about a wrap photo tells you whether the film works.
What it does tell you is that Hoult was on the call sheet for the last shot of the production.
For a movie Gunn has described as being as much Lex Luthor’s as Superman’s, that is the detail worth holding onto, wherever that river turns out to be.
Man of Tomorrow hits theaters July 9, 2027. Gunn also recently responded to claims that things are on hold due to the Paramount-WBD merger.
