David Corenswet. Photo: BANG Showbiz via Reuters.

Jewish actor David Corenswet is set to play the role of Superman in the upcoming DC Studios film Superman: Legacy and Rachel Brosnahan will star as his love interest, Daily Planet reporter Lois Lane, the film’s writer-director James Gunn confirmed Tuesday on Twitter.

This is reportedly the first time that a Jewish actor will take on the role of the famed comic book superhero Clark Kent, who has his own Jewish roots, and while Brosnahan is not Jewish, the Emmy and Golden Globe-winning actress played a Jewish character in the popular Amazon Prime series The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, which recently concluded its fifth and final season.

Only three actors have previously played Superman on the big screen — Christopher Reeve in 1978’s Superman; Brandon Routh in 2006’s Superman Returns; and Henry Cavill in Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel (2013), Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) and Justice League (2017). Cavill also made a cameo in 2022’s Black Adam but none of the three actors are Jewish.

A Pennsylvania native, Corenswet’s father, John Corenswet, was a former theater actor in New York City and lawyer who was from a prominent Jewish family in New Orleans, according to The Jewish Chronicle, which added that David’s great-grandfather has German Jewish roots and was a Jewish immigrant from Russia.

David, 29, and Brosnahan were among six actors who auditioned for the lead roles in Superman: Legacy, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The publication said Gunn did filming screen tests recently with Nicholas Hoult and Tom Brittney, who hoped to snag the role of Superman, while Emma Mackey and Phoebe Dynevor were competing for the role of Lois Lane.

The original Superman comic book was written and illustrated in 1938 by Jewish childhood friends Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, children of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. Although in the comic books the Man of Steel is not explicitly identified as Jewish, Siegel and Shuster were forthcoming about the Jewish influences that helped them create the iconic character.

Siegel once explained: “What led me into creating Superman in the early thirties? Hearing and reading of the oppression and slaughter of helpless, oppressed Jews in Nazi Germany… seeing movies depicting the horrors of privation suffered by the downtrodden. I had the great urge to help the downtrodden masses, somehow … Superman was the answer.”