Up until now, Syfy’s Krypton seemed like it would be the Superman-equivalent of Fox’s Gotham—which is to say that it was a show about a place commonly associated with a superhero, but set before that superhero first put on their cape. For its upcoming streaming service, though, DC has decided to lean further into the Gotham mold with Metropolis, a show about the place where Superman lives that’ll be set before Superman lives there.
According to Deadline, Metropolis comes from Gotham executive producers John Stephens and Danny Cannon, and it’ll follow ace reporter Lois Lane and billionaire villain Lex Luthor as they “investigate the world of fringe science and expose the city’s dark and bizarre secrets.” That makes it sound like Lois and Lex are working together, which wouldn’t be totally absurd, but that’s already sort of the premise of Fox’s Lucifer—which is also loosely tied to a DC comic book. Either way, it’s specifically set “before the arrival of Superman,” so this will theoretically take place in a world that does resemble the traditional DC universe (unlike Gotham, which is set in some kind of madman’s interpretation of a Batman comic).
This is the fourth new show coming to the yet-unnamed DC-centric streaming service, with the others being the live-action Titans, the Harley Quinn cartoon, and the continuation of fan-favorite series Young Justice.