I'd been a Superman fan since the time I was a little kid. We had great respect for the Donner movie, and Superman II with Terence Stamp as Zod but I felt it was time to bring the character into the 21st century.

Even in our business, as is the world, we are in the age of specialisation. You see a lot of names of producers on a movie. If you have the idea, if you oversee the development, if you oversee the production, if you help package the movie, you sell the movie - you can be a producer. There's not a lot of us who do the whole gamut.

I came from advertising. For me it's about protecting the director's vision. That's always the goal. There's keeping things on budget and on time and dealing with selling the movie so that to me is a focus. But also it's about serving the script. We are genre filmmakers, those are the films we love to make, so my perspective is a little different.

I think that Superman is the pinnacle of the DC Universe. Our feeling always was that you need to get Superman right. That was also our goal. We didn't want to ignore that this universe exists.

There is an expectation with a superhero film that there is spectacle and action but there also has to be heart. Striking that balance is really important.

You think that it must be great to be Superman but it's also hard to be Superman, especially when growing up.

It's rare that I'm working on a movie and that's the case. My goal is the same, ultimately at a certain point you give it to the director and their vision. You're there to support that vision.