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.

Chicago's such a great city because it's got so many different brilliantly architecturally looking buildings, and you can really modify that city.

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.

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.

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.

At least you used to know 'there's the villain, there's the good guy', but today there are more shades of grey.

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.