sequel was to start in mid-2007, before Singer halted development in favor of Valkyrie. Filming was then pushed to March 2008, but writers Dougherty and Dan Harris left in favor of other career opportunities. The 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike pushed the release date to 2010. Singer still listed the sequel as a priority in March 2008, saying that the film was in early development. Routh expected filming to begin in early 2009. Paul Levitz, president of DC Comics, expected Routh to reprise the title role from Superman Returns before his contract for a sequel expired in 2009. However, with Warner Bros. deciding to reboot the film series, Singer dropped out in favor of directing Jack the Giant Slayer. In August 2008, Warner Bros. President of Production Jeff Robinov reflected, "Superman Returns didn't quite work as a film in the way that we wanted it to. It didn't position the character the way he needed to be positioned. Had Superman worked in 2006, we would have had a movie for Christmas of this year or 2009. Now the plan is just to reintroduce Superman without regard to a Batman and Superman movie at all." Arrowverse Brandon Routh reprised his role as Clark Kent / Superman in addition to playing Ray Palmer / The Atom in the 2019 Arrowverse TV series crossover "Crisis on Infinite Earths". Executive producer Marc Guggenheim was reluctant to call Routh's crossover appearance a sequel when addressing whether the character's appearance would constitute a sequel to Superman Returns. "I don't know if it's for me to say. We're picking up so many years after the events of that movie, maybe a coda is a better word than sequel." Set on Earth-96 in the Arrowverse, this version of Superman has become an aged and beleaguered superhero similar to the iteration from the DC Comics' mini-series Kingdom Come; adopting a black belt and an s-shield with a black background as a sign of mourning after losing his friends and wife (having been married to Lois at some point after revealing his secrets to her) to a terrorist attack on the Daily Planet by a psychopath from Gotham City. He is also similar to another iteration, Kal-L (remained working as a newspaper's editor-in-chief instead of went into seclusion after what happened), making this Superman an amalgam of the two, as well as being a facsimile to Ray Palmer. He