Man of Tomorrow’s First Set Photo Has A Brilliant Superman Easter Egg 99% Of Fans Missed

April 21, 2026

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Filming for James Gunn’s Man of Tomorrow has started, and, to celebrate, the filmmaker put out the first look at something that may — or may not — be in the movie. In a picture shared across his social media accounts, Gunn revealed a red and black chess board with pieces carefully laid out, Lex Luthor’s inmate card and lanyard, an open bag of Ruffles potato chips and the thing most people focused on: the movie’s clapper board with a new logo on it that mixes Superman’s insignia with Brainiac’s.

And while the comics and movie fans discussed the deeper meaning of that new symbol, chess fans focused on the board. Or, more to it, how the board was laid out. To the untrained eye, it may seem like a normal game of chess was happening, but to die-hard chess fans, the way the pieces are displayed on the board called back to a very important and very famous match. One against a genius and a machine: game six of 1997’s Deep Blue versus Kasparov.

The Day Machine Beat Man

1997 wasn’t the first time Garry Kasparov, one of the most celebrated chess masters in history, faced off against IBM’s Deep Blue computer to see if the company had made a machine that could outthink a man. The two faced off in 1996 and Kasparov, not unlike the mythological hero John Henry, defeated the computer 4-2 (unlike John Henry, Kasparov didn’t die proving humanity’s worth). But when the two competitors met again in 1997, things would go differently.

Kasparov put up a valiant effort across 6 games. He won the first game in 45 moves, giving hope to those who watched that despite the improvements made to Deep Blue, who IBM rechristened “Deeper Blue,” it would still come up short. The second match saw Deep Blue force Kasparov to resign, but the computer’s win was controversial. Deep Blue had played a move that seemed to be too, for lack of a better term, “human” for a machine to make, as it gained them nothing, but was odd enough to throw Kasparov off his game. Kasparov even alleged that IBM had one of his flesh and blood rivals hidden away making the actual moves.

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Games three and four both ended in a draw, bringing back the hope that Kasparov could win the day. There was a moment in game five where Kasparov could have won, but he overlooked a move, and Deep Blue was able to force him into yet another draw. Like any exciting story, it would all come down to the final game. Whoever managed to win it would be the victor of the day. For humans, a win would mean that computers still couldn’t match our ability to strategize and improvise. For IBM, a Deep Blue win would mean that they had created the most sophisticated machine of all time (at that point).

Deep Blue proved to be too much and, in fewer than 20 moves, Kasparov resigned. The win went to the machine, with a final score of 3½–2½. Kasparov walked away believing that IBM had cheated and called for a rematch. IBM, in a move that spurned conspiracies and suspicion, did not take Kasparov up on his offer and instead shut the Deep Blue program down. Perhaps, like WOPR in WarGames, the computer realized that the only way to win was not to play.

The Final Kasparov VS Deep Blue Board Matches James Gunn’s Photo, But Who Is Kasparov?

Deep Blue v Kasparov and James Gunn Chess Board

The position of the pieces in the final Kasparov vs Deep Blue game has become rather famous in the world of chess and computer science, as it shows the first time a machine was able to outthink a person. And James Gunn using the layout in this photo can’t be an accident. Obviously, in the analogy of it all, Deep Blue would be Brainiac winning the match over a man, but who is the man? Is Superman, the hero of all mankind, the Kasparov in this situation? Or could it be Lex Luthor?

The most likely answer seems to be Superman. After all, if the Man of Steel could handle Brainiac on his own, he wouldn’t need to team up with Luthor. But considering Gunn’s previous comments about Man of Tomorrow and Lex Luthor’s place in the story, it’s possible that it is the Metropolis billionaire who can’t beat Brainiac. Not long after Man of Tomorrow was announced, Gunn said that he was “more interested in getting into the heart of Lex.“ In Superman, Lex was beaten by, for lack of a better term, friendship and love, but the most important thing to him — his mental acuity — remained undefeated. Perhaps in Man of Tomorrow, Luthor comes face to face with a foe he can’t outthink and, in thus, falls back on the very thing that beat him the last time: teamwork.

We’ll all know for sure on July 9, 2027.