Smallville creators Al Gough and Miles Millar are currently enjoying streaming success with Netflix’s hit series Wednesday, so they’re not exactly desperate to relive old glories.

Even so, the “young Superman”-themed show, which aired from 2001 to 2011—first on The WB, then on The CW—was a major part of the pair’s lives for a whole decade. It was also developed well before the current superhero movie boom. Given the show’s legacy, it’s easy to wonder what Smallville would be like if it were made today for audiences who are now intimately familiar with the ins and outs of live-action superhero storytelling. Would a remake subvert or exceed expectations, or simply tread a familiar path?

The original Smallville took flight as a highly watchable coming-of-age teen drama. But if you ask Gough and Millar, the fast-and-loose way the show treated established Superman lore means it would never get made in today’s entertainment climate.

“The whole premise of the show was not canon,” Millar told The Hollywood Reporter in 2022. “The idea that Clark arrived in the meteor shower that killed people, and that Lex was there. All those things were completely new, added to the mythology of Superman, but we categorically would not be allowed to make that show and make those changes today.”

Not only do Millar and Gough believe a contemporary version of Smallville would be dead in the water, but they say they would actively opt against revisiting the project if the opportunity arose.

“I feel like we were very, very fortunate to do the show when we did it because we got to make the show we wanted to make, and frankly, there was no committee sitting over us telling us what we could or couldn’t do,” Gough explained. “We got to make the show we wanted to make, which, we wouldn’t be allowed to make that show today. One generation’s heresy is the next generation’s gospel.”

Millar and Gough already propelled Smallville into the ranks of the best CW shows of all time once. Since they both recognize the extreme difficulty of capturing that lightning in a contemporary bottle—and with the animated Smallville sequel series planned by Tom Welling and Michael Rosenbaum also stalled—it seems the series is destined to remain a cherished part of superhero TV history, without a modern remake in sight.
https://www.tvline.com/2020348/why-smallville-could-not-be-made-tv-today/