Brightburn brought a dark horrific approach to many of the common touches of the superhero genre. It turns out it may have foretold the next line of superhero films in the process, with the Marvel Cinematic Universe now embracing horror. Director David Yarovesky spoke to CBR about what it was like to bring superhero universe to a more horrific place, how excited he is for the upcoming Doctor Strange sequel and his intention with the horrifying violence of Brightburn.

Yarovesky was a fan of superheroes growing up, and has seen it become one of the defining genres of the modern era of entertainment. Yarovesky said, "I think it's a genre that taps into our imagination. The fun thing about this genre is that we experience it at every age. I have memories of reading comic books when I was a kid, and it opened up my mind to new things. The fact that so many years later, I could still have my mind opened up in crazy and exciting ways speaks to the power of comic books and the power of myth. It's the power of these mythologies growing and expanding. It's really cool."

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At Comic-Con International in San Diego, Blade and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness were announced, with both seemingly set to embrace more horror elements than previous installments in the MCU. The fact Brightburn came out right before these announcements sticks out to Yarovesky. "It's not lost on me that in the last few weeks a whole new slew of comic book movies that have an even dark or horror slant has been announced... That Doctor Strange movie, the title alone I'm already in. It's hard to imagine a title that gets me more excited than that title."

Brightburn follows a dark interpretation of the basic Superman mythos. A young boy is raised in the middle of the American heartland on a farm after crash landing on Earth as a baby. Although he showcases an array of superpowers, he doesn't have the best intentions for humanity and quickly turns on the people who live in his small town. It presents a fun and dark interpretation of the classic superhero franchise, something Yarovesky was excited to explore.

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"I don't know if we influenced that or not, but I can't help but feel on some level like we did. We opened up people's minds to a whole new idea of what a comic book movie can be. I'm really proud of that. It's hard not to notice that superheroes have swallowed all elements of media. And the one area they hadn't really gone into was something dark and scary. It's not always light.

"There have been, like superhero thrillers. Unbreakable is a thriller that I love but it's not really a horror movie. Superhero movies have [never] really gone into the depths of hell that we take our audience to in our movie. It certainly felt like we were breaking new barriers and opening people's minds in a new way. That was really exciting about it. People are always going to remember a hopeful superhero icon all of a sudden just violently ravaging innocent people. Kind of sticks with you."

"I like violence. I like pretend movie violence a lot. I like when people get killed horribly in Game of Thrones, I like Rambo movies. But at the same time, I don't like gratuitous violence. I don't like violence for the sake of violence. But an effective moment that shocks us with violence is a powerful moment that stays in your head... "There are beats, there are action beats to the violence. I think the idea is to keep doing what's unexpected, to keep people feeling unsafe.

"If every couple of minutes people are getting killed, then the audience gets numb to the violence and you never want that. You want to keep people not knowing, to make the threat feel real. If he gets you, you're going to die horribly. But you don't know if he's going to get you. You don't know where he's going to come from and when he's going to come. One of the things I feel really proud of about how we released Brightburn was how no one saw coming what we were making. So I hope that, if we're ever given the opportunity to make another of these, is to do the same thing. Surprising people with the direction we go with."

Directed by David Yarovesky, Brightburn is produced by James Gunn and written by Brian Gunn and Mark Gunn. The film stars Elizabeth Banks, David Denman, Jackson A. Dunn, Matt Jones, Meredith Hagner, Steve Agee, Becky Wahlstrom and Stephen Blackehart. It's available now digitally, and will arrive Aug. 20 on DVD and Ultra HD Blu-ray 4K.

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