Reimagining a Legend...
“As a kid, I watched The Adventures of Superman on our black-and-white TV. When George Reeves soared across the screen, wind in his face, I believed I could fly too. He was strong, kind and protective—everything a hero should be. And Lois Lane was his match: sharp, witty, and utterly fearless. When I was invited to help re-envision SUPERMAN, anchored in the optimism of the Silver Age comics—I was thrilled. The kindness and intelligence that defined the early Superman stories still shine through—but now in a world of astonishing design and cinematic sophistication.” – Rosemary Brandenburg SDSA
With those opening thoughts, Set Decorator Rosemary Brandenburg SDSA generously takes us deeply behind the scenes of this still and newly wondrous world...a truly fantastic
reimagining of story and place that transports us through dark into light, from vagaries of greed and exploitation to the truth of humanity and hope.
Building a New Metropolis...
SUPERMAN marks James Gunn’s first directing project for DC Films since becoming Co-Chair and CEO of the studio. Drawing inspiration from the Silver Age comics, Gunn’s approach is both classic and fresh – infused with his trademark humor and an inventive spin on the superhero genre. A meticulous planner and passionate visual collaborator, he’s an ardent champion of production design and deeply values what set decoration brings to the storytelling process.
Production Designer Beth Mickle crafted a world that radiates optimism. Metropolis is bright, dynamic, and richly stylized, anchored in midcentury aesthetics, bold geometric forms, and a strong palette. The city and the Fortress of Solitude reflect Superman’s hopeful spirit, while Lex Luthor’s dark and frightening underworld provides an ominous counterpoint: a sleek, brutal, coldly scientific surround pulsing with menace.
Shot largely on stages near Atlanta, with location work in southern Georgia, Cleveland, and Cincinnati, the production fused large-scale practical builds with VFX artistry led by Stéphane Ceretti. VFX expanded Metropolis, conjured the exterior of Superman’s icy fortress, created outer-space battles, and non-human Robots and Krypto the Superdog.
But much of what audiences see was captured in-camera...
That meant extensive, detailed set decoration across every environment, from crystalline alien tech to a lived-in newsroom and a farmhouse family room.
Our work in the set decoration department spanned the full range of craft...
Concept illustration, set design, graphics, sculpting, carpentry, metalwork, CNC routing, 3D printing, mold-making, scenic art, upholstery, drapery, and fine prop dressing.
Foundational set decoration skills—sourcing furnishings, technical dressing, lighting, and character decor—were exercised daily by my exceptional crew:
Lead Jason Bedig, Assistant Set Decorators Monica Monserrate Llenza SDSA and Liz Ayala, and a fine team of talented buyers, set dressers, researchers, office staff and artisans who made this immense project a joy.
The sets...
Fortress of Solitude
Onstage and on location, Svalbard, Norway...
Fortress of Solitude, Kryptonian database supercomputer. Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures.
As the film opens, Superman returns to his crystalline Fortress of Solitude, exploding from the Antarctic ice, to recuperate after a grueling battle. Immense organic crystals burst forward with enormous momentum, an energetic design that flows to the interior.
In our backstory, Superman used his laser vision to carve bedrock under the ice, creating his living space, then called up the energy of the earth to push up hundreds of crystals, shimmering with light.
The gorgeous hall is composed of contrasting surfaces of granite, giant ice crystals, and alien high tech finishes, referencing circular machine-age shapes. The set offers a nod to the original 1978 Fortress designed by John Barry, and yet in Mickle’s design, it’s markedly different in this interpretation.
The central hall, laboratory, walkways, lounges, and robot docks each required intricate collaboration. Lead Art Director Alex McCarroll designed two key set decoration elements: a thirty-foot-wide wedge-shaped Kryptonian database supercomputer crowned with giant lenses, and the kinetic Sun Chair—a hovering healing and meditation seat that glows, scans, and moves with the sun’s energy.
Fabrication was a shared accomplishment between Set Dec manufacturing, Special Effects Supervisor Dan Sudick and his team, especially his main crew Joel Mitchell, Bailey Eller, and Jeff Ogg; and Fixtures head Joel Warren, wiring thousands of individually controlled practical light sources.
Six vertical Robot Docks were largely built by Construction, and Set Dec added detail, such as: head and footrests, Kryptonian-styled electric connectors for tube lights, and a wall of floor-to-ceiling tech panels embedded into the rock behind them.
Set Dresser Zak Howell retrofitted rack panels originally sourced at Warner Bros, imposing a rhythm onto them that greatly enhanced this area of the set.
On the opposite side of the central hall, Set Dec designed and built the lab area, showcasing intergalactic botanical specimens, frozen into giant glowing ice blocks, on a rock crystal worktop. [Editor’s note: Click on the SHOW MORE PHOTOS button below!]
These reference Superman’s museum from the comics where he preserves myriad alien life forms that he collects from around the universe. Large transparent tanks contained organic forms intersected with crystal arrays, taking up a large wall of the set.
For the deep dive into the lore of the classic comic books, we had a secret weapon: Assistant Drapery Foreman John Crowe and his wife, Buyer Kristy Klinck, own a truly epic vintage comic book collection. Kristy lent us her encyclopedic knowledge and considerable research skills uncovering objects illustrated in these vintage magazines.
Fortress of Solitude, the Sun Chair. Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures.
The Sun Chair spins, adjusts in height, tilts forward and back, illuminates, and scans. Drapery Foreman Jessica Anderson developed upholstery for this chair: multiple fabrics in different tones, overlaid with a veiling layer, were combined and channeled to create a high tech, yet comfortable segmented padded surface, custom-fit to actor David Corenswet’s body. Lit tubing was laced around the pads to indicate a transition to the scanning/healing mode, as the sun’s healing rays beamed at Superman’s broken body.
For benches and Krypto’s dog bed, we created custom fabric with the symbol of the House of El (as in Superman’s birth name Kal-El, father Jor-El, and cousin Kara Xor-El aka Supergirl).
We made crystalline mineral tables, custom stools, and adapted rack panels, aligning with Kryptonian technology. Special Effects took on the task of manufacturing Saturn-inspired control units for the Sun Chair on stands next to the chairs, nicknamed “Binnacles.” Specialized control units were printed in 3D by FX to fit the Robots’ mechanical fingers.
This set was a complex puzzle to put together for everyone involved, so when it all came together very close to deadline, it was intensely gratifying to see the stunning elements working together so beautifully.
The Daily Planet
Interior: On location, Terminal Station, Macon, GA
Exterior: On location, Cleveland, OH
The Daily Planet hums with optimism and caffeine—it’s both workplace and heartbeat of the city. Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures.
Inside The Daily Planet...
The Daily Planet newsroom channels the pulse of a bustling metropolitan paper...an elegant old-school office layered with movement and character. Filmed in the 1916 Beaux-Arts railroad station in Macon, Georgia, this almost empty space was transformed with glass, warm brass, walnut woods, and accents of terra cotta and deep green.
Anchored by a huge iconic globe above a circular switchboard desk, the path from the added elevators led into the busy bullpen. Through the immense wall of glass windows, tall translights revealed the skyline of Metropolis.
The Daily Planet. Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures.
For this large old-school newspaper office, we were angling for a messy vitality, with individualized desk dressing for each news department. Each workstation told its own story—Lois Lane’s international beat, Clark Kent’s modest local news spot wedged next to a column, Steve Lombard’s sports clutter, Cat Grant’s gossip files, Jimmy Olsen’s photo equipment and archives.
Over sixty desks were individually dressed, from Art to Obituaries to Weather, each a microcosm of a specialist journalist’s life. Assistant Set Decorator Liz Ayala worked for months directing the large set of tasks needed to fill out this environment, ably assisted by Buyer Kristy Klinck and Gangboss Bart Barbuscia.
[Click on the SHOW MORE PHOTOS button below to access images of these detailed settings!]
Art Director Domenic Silvestri devised a clever integration with new desk toppers over rows of fixed existing period waiting benches. Set Dec’s drapery team fashioned cushions for the curved revealed ends of the classic wooden benches in a pumpkin color fabric, the earthy hue chosen as a theme color for this warm environment.
Hundreds of contemporary monitors placed on desks and mounted to columns and walls display the news, furthering the story as Lois, Jimmy, and the rest of the reporters and staff react to the breaking news. Extra detail for ultra-fans: All the monitors were branded “LordTech”. Rachel Brosnahan, Skyler Gisondo. Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures © 2025 Warner Bros. All Rights Reserved. TM & © DC.
We configured the ground plan and the shapes of desk clusters to facilitate flow through the space. Layers of files and paper, desktop phones, vintage desks, classic Midcentury-style rolling office chairs and uniform angle-poise desk lamps created the base to support a complex level of detail, which supported the actors and background players with motivation and business to attend to, the desks revealing elements of each character.
We dressed several background areas: A reception area for Editor-in-Chief Perry White’s office, two conference rooms, a copy layout room, lobby lounge and restaurant, break room, security desk, and the switchboard operators under the huge lobby globe. All were layered with practical lights, mounds of paper, and coffee stains—the lived-in authenticity of real work.
Lois Lane’s Metropolis Apartment
Stage Set
Lois Lane’s signature Metropolis apartment. Rachel Rosnahan as Lois Lane, with David Corenswet as Clark Kent/Superman. Photo by Jessica Miglio © 2025 Warner Bros. All Rights Reserved.
A City and a Character in Motion
One of the first sets constructed for SUPERMAN’s 2024 shooting schedule, Lois Lane’s Apartment was a compact, lived-in reflection of the city around it. Metropolis is a place of soaring glass towers and enduring brick facades, a city in constant motion. Her apartment occupies one of those older buildings. The space once shared with college roommates, now a solitary perch for the city’s most fearless reporter.
A Rich Palette:
Lois has often been depicted in purples and violets in the comics, but Beth Mickle opted for a richer, more complex palette: deep raspberry, aubergine, forest green, and terracotta, set against warm brick. Rather than comic-book color, she wanted a color scheme that could breathe with the edgy, clashing mood of the long scene between Clark and Lois. This palette informed our selection of set dressing and offered layers and depth in the final set.
Building a Life Through Character Detail
Actress Rachel Brosnahan, who plays Lois, joined us for rehearsal in Atlanta several weeks before filming began. She shared notes shaped by her deep dive into the lives of investigative reporters- details that became structural to our set decoration throughline for the set.
“I like the idea that she’s a pen & paper gal in a world that is moving more into tech,” Rachel noted. “Part of that professional clutter could include Post-Its or notes around her apartment– mostly concentrated around her workspace, but maybe one on the fridge and possibly one or two by the front door… I imagine that every Sunday she has to do a big clean to put it all back together for the week ahead, but as the week goes on it just devolves.“
This is the organized version of Lois’s desk! Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures.
Those insights guided us to shape her space – from creating stacks of notebooks banded together, to the state of her desk, to what to write on those Post-Its. We wanted an apartment that would tell a story in a glance: the rhythm of her work, her active mind, the drive for the truth that keeps her chasing the next lead. The flat feels lived-in, hardworking, and authentically Lois – functional but never pristine.
Design and Dressing:
The apartment reflects the reality of her life: all work, minimal rest. The set dressing layers her personal history with her professional obsession—current investigations, archived stories, notes, awards—all woven into her organized chaos. Her beat—international politics and its intersection with Metropolis—threads through her space. News clippings, receipts, and marked-up maps tell the story of someone who never quite clocks out.
The Writer’s Shelves:
Lois’s love of books and research became a defining feature. Mickle and Art Director Sam Avila designed built-in shelves flanking the fireplace, to create a sense of flow and transparency.
Lois’s love of books and research became a defining feature...Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures.
We experimented with dozens of arrangements for the books– some tidy, some stacked, others teetering–until the mix felt right. These were shelves of a mind in motion– fiction, foreign policy, scientific journals, notebooks, and mementoes nestled among research materials.
Lighting the Night:
The scene here was a 10-page nighttime dialogue–intimate and revealing. So, practical lighting became crucial. Director of Photography Henry Braham favors naturalistic light and practical sources. We leaned into that, offering table lamps, sconces, and pendants, their warm pools of light balancing the glow from the translights outside. Each fixture was carefully shaded and tested for tone. Corners of the rooms faded into shadow, fittingly, since Lois wasn’t expecting Clark to stop by.
Furnishing the Story:
Assistant Set Decorator Monica Monserrate Llenza SDSA, with Buyer Chrystale Wilson, led an exhaustive search for the perfect sofa. None were quite right, so we transformed one. Our drapery team reupholstered it in deep green corduroy, softened the cushions, and raised the legs for the perfect proportion. The final touches included throw pillows made of vintage folk textiles. Gang Boss John Horning led the set dressers to execute tasks from light fixture installation to the addition of traces of surface wiring in a space many times retrofitted by a series of inhabitants over decades.
The sofa was the center point, visually anchoring the offset rooms: kitchen, study, bedroom. Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures.
Key pieces came from SDSA Business Members in Los Angeles: Marc Meyer of Faux Library contributed the swivel chair where Clark sits, and Warner Bros. Property supplied the small rust-colored armchair. The mix of styles and eras gives the apartment its grounded, personal feel—collected over time, not curated for effect.
A Life in Layers:
Every corner of Lois Lane’s apartment carries the rhythm of her days: late nights, fast meals, relentless work. It’s both sanctuary and battlefield—a place where the world’s chaos narrows to a desk lamp’s circle of light. In the end, the apartment is less about style than story. It’s the world’s greatest reporter caught between deadlines and dreams—a space that hums with her energy long after she’s gone, notebook in hand, chasing the next truth.
Details:
Throughout the apartment, every object chosen served to echo Lois’s discipline and drive:
• Her matching pencils, moleskine notebooks, and index cards, always the same brand
• Awards for reporting excellence lined across the mantel– the Pulitzer Prize, The Golden Quill, the Scripps Howard Award
• A bulletin board of leads, clippings and receipts from her current story, “Stagg Research Facilities Under Scrutiny,” featuring a custom Stagg Industries logo added to a stock image of an industrial building
• Daily Planet press passes, Post-Its, and her Raleigh College diploma, where she once edited the Raleigh Review
• A framed photo of her parents on their honeymoon beside a vintage Nash car–a small anchor of emotion in a life lived at full speed.
On-Set:
SUPERMAN was my first time to work with On-Set Dresser Joseph Teagle, who I found to be superlative at the job. This small, intricate set was very challenging for the On-Set dresser and members of Drew Petrotta’s Prop Department. Entire swaths of the space have to be cleared to accommodate camera, then reset for reverses. When changes are requested by Director, DP, or actors, they must be handled with diplomacy and exquisite taste.
Graphics—Metropolis themes:
Graphics add a significant layer of storytelling to the apartment. Posters for the Metropolis Museum of Modern Art and Metropolis Library hint at Lois’s civic involvement, while custom Daily Planet newspapers add thematic layers.
The collaboration between the Prop Department (headed by Drew Petrotta) and Set Decoration on the newspapers was extensive. In-house Graphic Designers Kelsey Brennan, Susan Burig, Erin Morell, and ISS Studio Graphics, worked with our office teams, who invented articles and headlines and helped coordinate custom photos, all working together to express the Superman universe in print.
Above the mantle hangs Lois’s Pulitzer-winning article, “STAGG Informants Threaten International Stability.” The fridge displays a menu for Jitters Coffee—an Easter egg for comic fans, it nods to the Metropolis Café we created in downtown scenes.
[Editor’s note: Click on the SHOW MORE PHOTOS button below!]
LuthorCorp Comms Hub
Stage set
Perched menacingly above the city, Lex Luthor’s comms hub rules more than anyone realizes.
Inset: Superman confronts the supercilious villain in his headquarters. Nicholas Hoult as Lex Luthor, David Corenswet as Superman. Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures © 2025 Warner Bros. All Rights Reserved. TM & © DC.
For Lex Luthor’s Metropolis headquarters, Mickle specified a 1970s corporate brutalism: concrete combed walls, coffered ceilings, and sleek finishes in green marble, aluminum metals, and ash toned wood.
Built high off the stage floor to simulate a birds-eye view across Metropolis, the set was an exercise in precision. Planning and set construction was overseen by Art Director Domenic Silvestri, with whom we collaborated closely on exact placement of lighting fixtures and furnishings.
Our Set Dec team designed and fabricated eighteen workstations in eleven distinct configurations...
Each had custom monitors, keyboards, mics, control panels, and specialized equipment to manage Luthor’s elaborate missions. Set Dec Set Designer Bria Kinter drafted the units, then we built full-size foamcore mockups. We placed these into a taped-out version of the space, and invited Director James Gunn to run the scenes. From those notes, we refined layout, ergonomics, panel designs, and sightlines.
[Editor’s note: Click on the SHOW MORE PHOTOS button below!]
Revised, we went into production, led by Set Dec Shop foreman Robby Sadaka, Gangbosses Thaddeous Higgins, Zach Barrett and Rob Saccenti. Jason Olson, an accomplished Leadman is his own right, supplied the tech layers...buttons, lights, screens, and parts for all our built projects...and was invaluable in coordinating the progress of many of our fabrications.
The final effect was a cold, calculating environment, Lex Luthor’s intellect made physical.
The Pill
Stage build
The Pill, Luthor’s experimental portal, is the gangway to the Pocket Universe, built of lodestone and mathematical geometry. Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures.
Luthor invents a portal, an elaborate tube allowing transitions between dimensions, which we nicknamed The Pill due to its shape. It serves as a bridge to access his grander invention, the Pocket Universe. This very abstract sci-fi environment is where Lex builds experimental labs, detains his enemies, and lets his twisted genius have free rein, where no one but his minions are privy to what he’s up to. [Click on SHOW MORE PHOTOS below!]
Lex is brilliant and ambitious, but his disregard for guardrails between planes of reality gives this machine, and the Pocket Universe, in general, a sense of imminent instability.
Kent Family Farmhouse
Location: Southern Georgia
Filmed at a working cattle farm in southern Georgia, the Kent home required a careful blend of authenticity and restraint. The goal, per James Gunn’s direction, was realism–humble, heartfelt, not idealized. Construction and Greens reworked the exterior as Kansas, while we offered interior and exterior dressing that was unpretentious, functional, and spoke to the Kents’ values of warmth, work and family.
Clark’s childhood room was scaled down to feel intimate, filled with early 2000’s touches that grounded him in relatable time. Walls display a Smallville Giants pennant, and the Mighty Crabjoys punk poster developed through an extensive creative process with Gunn involving photo sessions and custom graphics. The bedding was carefully vetted to complement Superman’s iconic blue suit.
Clark Kent’s childhood room in Kansas, the bedding giving hint to the colors of his future suit. Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures.
Accomplished Buyers Stephanie Allen, Charlotte Lee and Kristy Klinck all sourced layers of authentic detail to this simple, yet layered home full of heart and kindness.
It takes a keen eye to take brand new items and give them a patina that blends and ages them into a set as gentle as this one. In Scenic Artist Gabe Harrington, I’m lucky to have a collaborator with such a strong ability to interpret character. He runs his department efficiently, and impresses me daily with his knowledge of chemistry, faux finishes, aging techniques...and stamina.
The Set Dec Office and Warehouse
Lead Jason Bedig, Gang Boss Mark Tuttle, and Set Decoration Coordinator Lisha Hocking provided massive support during our ten months working on SUPERMAN. From preproduction through shooting and wrap, their ability to keep the wheels moving is unmatched. Budgeting, planning, scheduling, tracking, managing the warehouse with all its comings and goings of trucks, set dressers, materials, shipping...the list of tasks is daunting, and it takes a really smart village to handle it. These are some of the best in the world.
Closing Reflections...
Working on SUPERMAN was an extraordinary journey—balancing the mythic with the human, the cosmic with the handmade. Every environment expressed character, history, and multidimensional connections: a reminder of why we love what we do: as James Gunn says, “Our job wasn’t just to build Superman’s world—it was to remind audiences why it’s worth saving.”
SDSA Business Member suppliers:
Alpha Companies | ArtPic | Astek Wallcovering | Bridge Furniture & Props ATL | CAPS | The Designer Fabric Studio, ATL | Faux Library (RIP) | Gold Room Props - Mark Boucher, Sean Ginevan | History For Hire | Hollywood International Placements - Tami Glenn | ISS Props/Independent Studio Services - Rick Caprarelli | ISS Studio Graphics - (printing Daily Planet) | LCW Props - CA and GA | Made to Measure Designs & Upholstery | Myers Carpet of Atlanta | Pinacoteca Picture Props | Playback Technologies | Practical Props | Studio Art and Technologies - Lewis Doty | Textile Artifacts - Custom S fabric | Universal Studios Property - Beverly Hadley | Warner Bros Property - Robert Greenfield
Non SDSA Members: GA Propsource | SSG/Studio Service Group I Technical Props
Crew:
Lead: Jason Bedig
Assistant Set Decorators: Mónica Monserrate-Llenza SDSA & Liz Ayala
Buyers: Kristy Klinck, Charlotte Lee, Stephanie Allen, Chrystale Wilson
Set Designer: Bria Kinter
Graphics: Kelsey Brennan, Ass’t: Erin Morrell
Set Decoration Office Coordinator: Lisha Hocking
Gangbosses: Bart Barbuscia, Zach Barrett, Chris Fuentes, John Horning, Jason Olson, John W Rodgers, Robert Saccenti, Mark Tuttle, Remington Veteto, Jason Witts
Set Dressers: Kyle Bridwell, Juan Cervantes, Austin Hendrix, Zak Howell, Sean Langan, Chris McGlamery, Gaby McMullan, Kyle Plowden, Willem Zumwalt
On-Set Dresser: Joseph Teagle
Drapery Foreperson: Jessica Anderson, Drapery Gangboss: John Crowe
Paint Foreman: Gabe Harrington, Painters Andy Bays & Michael Panagiotopulos
Set Dec Prop Shop Foreman: Robby Sadaka, Gangboss Thadeous Higgins
Production Assistants: Molly Starowesky, Nadiya Farrington, Tiffany Zapien
Cleveland Key Set Dressing Crew:
Lead: Leyna Haller | Buyers: Megan Malley Cannon, Kassandra DeAngelis SDSA | Production Assistant: Carissa Kieger
Keys:
Production Designer: Beth Mickle
SAD: David Scott
Art Directors: Sam Avila , Domenic Silvestri, Alex McCarroll
Assistant Art Directors: Daniela Medeiros, Paula Cuevas
ADC: Molly Flick
Researcher: Sammy Wadsworth
Digital Asset Manager: PJ Correa
Property Master: Drew Petrotta
Location Manager: Ian Easterbrook
Production: Nadia Paine, Tom Carson
Special Effects: Dan Sudick, Joel Mitchell, Bailey Eller, Jeff Ogg
Practicals: Joel Warren
And to any and all I have not mentioned, thank you for adding to our filmmaking experience.
[Don't forget to Click on SHOW MORE PHOTOS below!]
