Henry Cavill the show credit for bolstering his career: "It's done the most for me to date. [...] Now that there's an audience somewhere in America that's aware of who I am, I have more sell-ability, because of The Tudors." "Entertainment Weekly" named him the "Most Dashing Duke" and praised his work on "The Tudors" for displaying "charm, depth and a killer bod". Cavill had been set to play Superman in McG's 2004 film, "Superman: Flyby". However, McG pulled out of the project and direction was taken over by director Bryan Singer, who recast Brandon Routh as the lead in "Superman Returns".
Superhero film of episodes of that same series released theatrically, and "Batman" (1966) a big-screen extension of the "Batman" television series starring Adam West. In 1957 Japan, Shintoho produced the first film serial featuring the "tokusatsu" superhero character Super Giant, signaling a shift in Japanese popular culture towards "tokusatsu" masked superheroes over "kaiju" giant monsters. Along with "Astro Boy", the "Super Giant" film serials had a profound effect on the Japanese "tokusatsu" superhero genre. Another early superhero film was "Ōgon Bat" (1966), a Japanese film starring Sonny Chiba based on the 1930 Kamishibai superhero Ōgon Bat. Original superhero characters emerged in other,