Yahoo News How Brightburn sets up a twisted dark superhero universe
Note: Contains massive spoilers for Brightburn and its ending.
Produced by James Gunn, Brightburn's brilliant high-concept setup is: What if Superman had been evil?
The horror movie follows a couple who raise a young boy after he crash-lands in their garden, unaware that he has superhuman powers and, unfortunately for the world, he doesn't want to use them for good...
In classic superhero fashion, Brightburn sets up its own twisted and super dark cinematic universe. But to say how, we have to delve into evil spoiler territory, so don't read on if you haven't seen Brightburn yet.
Aware that their son Brandon (Jackson A Dunn) is behind a series of murders in town, Tori (Elizabeth Banks) and Kyle (David Denman) both try to stop Brandon from killing again, only for it to end badly for both of them.
To cover up his murders, Brandon destroys an aeroplane and acts as the sole survivor of the crash. Over the first part of the credits we get a montage of news reports that show various disasters in the town of Brightburn, hinting at Brandon's continued evil rampage.
Michael Rooker also appears as The Big T, an internet conspiracy theorist who rants about supervillains who live among us.
As well as Brandon, The Big T refers to a half-man,half-sea-creature terrorising the oceans and a witch who strangles people with a rope that makes them tell the truth. Yep, there's an evil Aquaman and Wonder Woman in Brightburn's universe.
In a neat Easter egg, one of the images shown is of Crimson Bolt (Rainn Wilson) from James Gunn's black comedy Super. If the fate of the world is in the hands of Crimson Bolt – who has no superpowers – against Brandon, evil Aquaman and evil Wonder Woman, then we have a feeling the world is screwed.
Director David Yarovesky told Collider that the ending tease was just one of a number of ideas for the credits scenes.
"How much do we want to show of the next steps? Through what lens do we want to learn it? There were all sorts of ways in. The best way was to just give a picture of the future and be a little more vague," he explained.
One idea was to return to Brandon's classmate Caitlyn (Emmie Hunter), whose hand was crushed by Brandon.
"We talked about Caitlyn - it ends with her in a lab fastening a robot arm on her broken arm, and her just pissed off," Yarovesky recalled. "We just bounced around ideas for hours and some of them were ridiculous and some of them were cool, like that."
But the director won't be immediately drawn on Brightburn's potential cinematic universe, noting that if there were to be a sequel, it would be shrouded in secrecy like Brightburn was until its first trailer.
Producer James Gunn was a bit more open about what Brightburn sets up: "I think it's not an isolated experience. There are other things happening like that in the world," he told The Hollywood Reporter, with Elizabeth Banks adding: "It's not just about Brightburn, Kansas all of a sudden. This is a phenomenon."
Unfortunately, Brightburn hasn't set the box office alight in the US, taking just over $16 million after three weeks, so it'll be looking to international markets to give it a better shot at getting a sequel.
With a reported budget of only $6 million though, we could still see the continuation of Brightburn's twisted universe if Gunn and co want one.
Brightburn is out in US cinemas now and is released in UK cinemas on June 19.
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