The Walking Dead Star Is Officially Playing Superman
Chandler Riggs will voice Superman in the upcoming Justice League X RWBY.
The Walking Dead actor Chandler Riggs is playing Superman, but perhaps not in the way you might think. Riggs, who played Carl Grimes in the first eight seasons of the popular AMC horror-drama series, will not be replacing Henry Cavill in James Gunn’s new version of the DC Universe. Instead, Riggs will voice Superman in the upcoming animated movie Justice League x RWBY. Riggs announced the role over Twitter, saying that he’s always wanted to be a superhero and to be in an anime, making the upcoming movie a dream role for the 23-year-old actor.
Despite Chandler Riggs’ enthusiasm when announcing his role as Superman, RWBY (pronounced “Ruby”) is not exactly an anime — though it certainly is anime-influenced. Anime, as you probably know, is a term that applies to Japanese-made animations. RWBY, however, is an American-made computer-animated series produced by Rooster Teeth. Originally released on YouTube before finding a home on Crunchyroll and Amazon Prime Video, the series follows four girls who are part of a training academy that prepares them to battle monsters called Grimm who threaten the world. The ongoing series started in 2013 and has so far lasted for 106 episodes over the past nine years.
Of course, this series has generally had nothing to do with DC’s superheroes, making the upcoming Justice League x RWBY an unusual departure for the series. Not many details have been released about the plot of the upcoming movie. However, the current summary available online states that the series’ protagonists will be fighting a new type of Grimm on the island of Patch, forcing them to team up with a “red-and-blue clad” farmboy — presumably Chandler Riggs’s Superman.
The summary also describes a mysterious woman who appears to have no concept of modern society — most likely Wonder Woman. Bruce Wayne (aka Batman) will also play a part in the movie, though nothing about the character’s exact role has been revealed.
Chandler Riggs got the opportunity to voice Superman after a long stint playing Carl Grimes, a young survivor of The Walking Dead‘s zombie outbreak. First a shy and reserved child, Carl Grimes became hardened to the brutal reality of post-outbreak life throughout the series. He eventually became a battle-hardened youth with a worrying bloodlust that he grapples with in the series’ later seasons. Grimes meets his end in the middle of season 8, choosing to commit suicide after getting bitten by a walker, which would have caused him to change into a walker himself.
Since leaving The Walking Dead, Chandler Riggs has appeared in the 2017 horror thriller Keep Watching, the 2019 post-apocalyptic romance Only, the 2019 crime drama Inherit the Viper, and the ABC TV series A Million Little Things. Riggs also briefly reprised his role as Carl Grimes in an episode of Robot Chicken, and he had an uncredited appearance as a farmer in the series finale of The Walking Dead. Besides his role in Robot Chicken, the upcoming Superman part will be Chandler Riggs’s first experience providing a voice for an animated series.
