In mid-July 2025, shortly after the White House posted an image depicting U.S. President Donald Trump as Superman on social media — around the same time director James Gunn's "Superman" film premiered — a rumor began circulating that Gunn had filed a $1 billion lawsuit against the White House and Trump for unauthorized use of the "Superman" poster.
For example, a July 12 thread post read (archived): "JUST IN: James Gunn Launches $1 Billion Lawsuit Against White House and Donald Trump for Unauthorized Use of Superman Poster Portraying Donald Trump as a superhero amid MAGA Backlash."
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The post had gained more than 370,000 views and 37,000 likes as of this writing. Similar claims appeared elsewhere on Facebook (archived) and X (archived).
However, we have rated this claim false.
Social media posts were mostly referring to an article (archived) published by an outlet called USAmidia. The article claimed Gunn, as co-head of DC Studios and director of the new "Superman" film, filed a $1 billion lawsuit in federal court, alleging copyright infringement from an "unauthorized political poster featuring Trump depicted as Superman." The piece described the supposed lawsuit as seeking damages for "irreparable harm" to the "Superman" brand.
The story contained specific details about the alleged lawsuit, including the $1 billion figure, claims of copyright infringement, and quotes supposedly from Gunn's legal team, yet no legitimate news media outlets reported on the matter, per searches of Google, Bing (archived) and DuckDuckGo (archived). Had Gunn filed such a high-profile lawsuit against the White House and Trump over "Superman imagery, it would have generated significant news coverage from major entertainment and legal publications.
Media Bias/Fact Check, a tool that provides transparency to a source's biases and objectivity, rated (archived) USAmidia as a "questionable source" with "very low" factual reporting. The site was described as a "clickbait entertainment site that publishes sensationalist and often false news with no transparency and no editorial accountability." Media Bias/Fact Check noted that "multiple stories published by USAmidia have been explicitly debunked by independent fact-checkers," and that the outlet did not issue corrections when stories were proven false, leaving discredited articles online.
Snopes reached out to DC Studios and Warner Bros. for verification and will update this article if we receive a response.