Wendell Pierce is your new Perry White in James Gunn's Superman

Say what you will about James Gunn, but the man can cast a damn movie: THR reports today that Gunn has selected Wendell Pierce as the new version of tough-as-nails newspaper editor Perry White for his 2025 film Superman. News of the casting comes just a day or so after Gunn announced that he was making a few edits of his own, chopping the Legacy off the film’s previous title.

Pierce is a prolific performer, most recently starring as the voice of wisdom and authority on the John Krasinski adaptation of Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan. But, if we’re being truly honest here, there will always be a part of us who sees him first and foremost as Detective Bunk Moreland, the hard-talking, cigar-chomping, soft-hearted foil to Dominic West’s Jimmy McNulty on HBO’s The Wire. And while we’d never want to box as talented a performer as Pierce in to a single role, it’s not hard to transpose big chunks of Bunk on to the platonic ideal of Daily Planet editor Perry White, a man who traditionally can bawl you out in one moment, and give you the best pep talk in the world the next.

Pierce joins a cast that includes David Corenswet, Rachel Brosnahan, and Skyler Gisondo as Planet employees Clark Kent, Rachel Brosnahan, and Jimmy Olson—one of whom, we’ll go ahead and spoil, turns out to be this Superman character that everyone’s so worked up about these days. Pierce will also co-star alongside Isabela Merced, Edi Gathegi, Anthony Carrigan, and Nicholas Hoult, the latter playing classic Supes badguy Lex Luthor, who has sometimes clashed (or employed) White in the comics. The film, scheduled for 2025, is expected to serve as the formal “full” introduction” to the new DC Universe Gunn and his studio co-head, Peter Safran, have been cooking up for the last few years—with an optimistic eye toward pulling DC out of the superhero slump that it and Marvel have been sinking so lugubriously into of late.