So what’s happened with the Superman Returns sequel?

The plan, following the Batman template, was fairly straightforward. Bring in an established director whose films have mixed commercial and critical acclaim. Give them the reigns to one of your potentially most lucrative superhero franchises. Sit back and watch the cash come in, and start planning the sequel fairly quickly.

It worked with Christopher Nolan and Batman Begins, which paved the way, of course, to last summer's The Dark Knight. And when Warner Bros unleashed 2006's Superman Returns into the world, under the stewardship of Bryan Singer - who by this time had two successful X-Men movies under his belt - the thinking was surely that 2009 would see some form of Superman 2.

Only, as you've probably worked out, it hasn't happened yet. That's in spite of Warner Bros' summer 2009 slate being so bare at one point that it needed to delay a Harry Potter movie by eight months to bulk it up.

So where exactly is the next Superman film? Nowhere in sight, appears to be the answer. For a while, it seemed that Bryan Singer would be re-attached, and while nobody has come out and said that he won't be doing another Superman movie, Warner Bros has clearly hardly been beating a path to his door to do it. The reason? The underwhelming word of mouth that the last film garnered. It actually did similar numbers to Batman Begins too at the US box office, and yet many were left wondering several things. Where's the action? Why are you being quite so reverential to the earlier films? What's this silly plot all about?

Personally, I quite liked it (and to be fair to Singer, when he stages an action sequence, such as the landing of the aircraft, it's something to behold), but Superman Returns nonetheless failed to ignite fresh passion in the franchise. But still, the initial thought was that enough money was in the bank to press ahead with another film.

And then Warner Bros wobbled. It had originally announced that the film would indeed be arriving in the midst of 2009's summer blockbuster season, and that Bryan Singer was pencilled in to return to the director's chair. The initial thought was that Brainiac and Bizarro were possible villains for the story, and that the action quotient would be ramped right up too. In fact, all of the key cast were also primed to return, too.

Thus, the story work began, and yet it seemed to be taking longer than originally planned. Then, Singer decided to go off and film the Tom Cruise-headliner Valkyrie, and the word was that filming would start in the middle of 2008. At the end of 2007, though, writers Dan Harris and Michael Dougherty left the project, and the writers' strike in America made it problematic to quickly bring in fresh faces. Warner Bros decided to delay the project to 2010, as a result.

But then talk surfaced that Warner Bros was looking, effectively, to reboot the reboot. Comics star Mark Millar commented that he'd approached Warner Bros with such a plan, after saying that an unnamed yet well-known director had asked him to help him come up with a pitch. Millar was looking to do a trilogy of pictures, but it's understood that by this stage in 2008, Warner Bros was listening to ideas from many writers, none of whom it appears has yet given the studio the magic bullet that it seeks.

It was in the summer