Can Diversity Save Superman?

This is the kind of blog post where a few different things all coalesced in my brain to come up with a thought.  Here they are:

1. Scott Mendelson from Forbes tweeting that while the last two Superman movies did OK in the US, they did not do so well overseas.
2. This Geek Twins post about a black Superman
3. My own blog post about domestic vs international film grosses

Putting 2 and 2 and 2 together to get 6, I think the way to make a Superman movie that's an actual hit is to use some diversity in the casting.  Here are a couple of scenarios.

Option 1:  Black Superman

The upside of this (besides morality) is that in 2018 two of the biggest superhero movies featured black heroes:  Black Panther and Into the Spider-Verse (which didn't do as well as live action movies but fared well for an animated, non-Disney/Pixar movie).  And as noted in my blog entry last year, more than 50% of the gross for each of those movies came from the domestic market, compared to about 30% for movies like Avengers 3 and Aquaman.

So while casting someone like Michael B Jordan as the Geek Twins article mentioned might not play overseas, as Mendelson said, audiences overseas weren't gravitating towards white actors anyway.  So fuck 'em.  Cast a black man and hope for a big domestic gross like Black Panther that means you don't have to rely on overseas to turn a profit.  Sure it'll piss off the Fox "News", MAGA hat snowflakes, but fuck them too.

Option 2:  Chinese Superman

Yes there was a Chinese Superman in the comics for a year or so.  The title was called New Super-Man and featured a Chinese guy who had the same powers as Superman thanks to science or whatever.  The point being there is a precedent, so this isn't coming out of left field.  Maybe center field.

The idea here is you cast someone Asian or Asian-American or maybe even just part-Asian and hope that it appeals more to markets like China.  How would it work at home?  Probably not as well as a black Superman, but then have we had an Asian superhero leading a movie?  Not really with Marvel's Shang-Chi and the 10 Rings not coming out for a year or so.  Which means there's not much hard data to work with.

Option 3:  Chinese Lois/Black Lois

If you don't want to go as far as a Chinese Superman, then why not a Chinese Lois Lane?  You could get someone like Awkafina (Crazy Rich Asians) or Li Bingbing (Megalodon) to play the intrepid reporter and I think it would work just as well as Margot Kidder, Amy Adams, or especially Kate Bosworth.

Would that have enough appeal for the Asian markets?  I don't know.

Similarly you could cast a black woman as Lois and hope that helps to boost the domestic gross even if you have another white Superman.  Someone like Lupita Nyong'o (Us) would be pretty awesome as a reporter crusading for social justice.

Would that work?  Don't ask me.

Option 4:  Some of the Above

And of course you can mix some of these things up.  You could have a black Superman with an Asian Lois.  Or an Asian Superman with a black Lois.  Why the fuck not?  It's the 21st fucking Century!  Let's stop being so fucking Puritanical about this shit.

The overall point here is that not only is diversity ethical, but maybe it could be profitable too.  It's a win-win!