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What would you do if the alien baby you raised as your own son started to display super-strength and laser-beam eyes just as the residents of your town started to go missing? This is the relatable predicament Tori and Kyle Breyer (Elizabeth Banks and David Denman) find themselves in over the course of Brightburn, the super-hero-horror hybrid directed by David Yarovesky and produced by James Gunn. When an aircraft lands in rural Kansas with a child inside, Tori and Kyle raise the boy as Brandan Breyer (Jackson A. Dunn). Things go great, until the locked-away spaceship starts glowing an ominous red and putting the thought in Brandan's head that he needs to "take the world..."

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Before the film's premiere, I sat down with Jackson A. Dunn and David Denman to discuss whether they thought Brandan's origin story was more "realistic" than Superman's, what steps Denman would take should his son hypothetically start shooting lasers out of his eyes, the film's practical effects, and more. Check out what he had to say in the player above, and below is exactly what we talked about. Brightburn also stars Matt Jones, Meredith Hagner, Steve Agee, and Becky Wahlstrom.

  • Do they think the story of Brightburn is a more "realistic" scenario than Superman's origin story?
  • What Denman's first moves would be if his son started acting like a supervillain.
  • How often Dunn's floating—and there's a lot of menacing floating in this movie—was practical vs. CGI, and how much that helped his performance.

Here is the official synopsis for Brightburn:

What if a child from another world crash-landed on Earth, but instead of becoming a hero to mankind, he proved to be something far more sinister? With Brightburn, the visionary filmmaker of Guardians of the Galaxy and Slither presents a startling, subversive take on a radical new genre: superhero horror.

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Image via The H Collective
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Image via The H Collective
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Image via The H Collective