The story of Kal-El is actually a great story about adoption. He is an alien who has embraced his human side. As much as he loves and honours his heritage, and he needed to know where he came from and discover who he was, he has to decide who he is going to be.

In films of terror, it's often not about being graphic. Or if there is a graphic image, it's extremely swift. Everyone talks about the shower scene in 'Psycho,' but that's the only graphic scene in the entire film.

We live in a much more complicated time than when Superman was created 75 years ago. Or even when Superman The Movie was created in the 70s. There are great advances but with those come a great many complications.We felt that the character needed to grow up in that kind of environment and had to face those kinds of colossal choices that were not going to be easy. It's difficult to figure out the right path. And even if you do good there are causalities to your choices. We thought it would be compelling.

For a long time, the film business was a single-digit business on investment return. Now, because of home video, it's a low double-digit business, and the studios want to make sure it doesn't go back into the single-digit business.

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.

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

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.