KRYPTON Character Casting Breakdown Revealed

Superman's ancestry is about to get interesting.

TVLine has revealed a casting breakdown for the Syfy pilot Krypton, which explores the homeworld of Superman generations before the planet's destruction.  After two years of development, the pilot was officially ordered by Syfy last month and production is expected to begin in Montreal later this summer.

According to the article, here are the characters we'll be seeing if the pilot is picked up as a full series...

SEG-EL -- Envisioned here as athletic, quietly confident and in his 20s, comic fans are familiar with an older (and a bit grumpier) Seg from his appearance in the classic Starman No. 51, written by James Robinson with story by Robinson and David S. Goyer, who is executive producer/writer of Krypton. But Seg’s a good guy at any age; in the comics, he and son Jor-El (Kal-El/Superman’s father) helped Starman get away while other Kryptonians wanted to detain – and dissect – the Earthling.

LYTA ZOD -- This twentysomething beauty will likely have some familial tie to Superman’s future foe, General Zod, while she herself is a (reluctant) warrior.

VAL-EL -- Seg’s genius grandpa defied death by going into the Phantom Zone, and is a staunch believer in space exploration. (We know that’s a lesson he’ll pass along to his great-grandson.)

Other characters include:

ALURA ZOD -- Lyta’s mom happens to bear the same name as Kara Zor-El’s mother on Supergirl, while “Zod” always raises an eyebrow because of that whole “kneel before” thing.

DEV-EM -- If anyone is going to survive Krypton’s inevitable fate, it’ll be this chiseled, twentysomething bad boy. In the comics, Dev escapes the doomed planet, abuses Superboy on Earth and eventually becomes an ally of the Legion of Super-Heroes… in the 30th century.

TER-EL -- AKA Seg’s father. We didn’t get him to play Supergirl’s Man of Steel, but maybe Tom Welling (Smallville) could play Clark’s great-grandfather on Krypton?

Created in 1988 by John Byrne and Mike Mignola, Seyg-El (note the spelling) first appeared in World of Krypton (vol.2) #3 as the father of Jor-El and grandfather to Kal-El, who becomes Superman.

Seyg-El was a noble Lord of the House of El, one of the most respected families on all of the planet, Krypton.  The Master of the Gestation Chambers selected Seyg-El from the Register of Citizens to mate with a woman of compatible genetic lineage.  Together they sired a son whom Seyg-El named, Jor-El.

Seyg-El's relationship with Jor-El lacked any true familial passion, and he regarded his son as an embarrassing maverick who was ignorant of proper Kryptonian traditions.

Jor-El brought his father additional embarrassment when he requested to actually meet the woman with whom he would procreate.  Seyg-El considered such an appeal extremely unorthodox by the sterile traditions of Kryptonian culture, and subsequently flew into a rage. However, the Master of the Gestation Chambers granted the request, and Jor-El soon married the young librarian, Lara.

Created in 1961 by Jerry Siegel and George Papp, Dev-Em first appeared in Adventure Comics (vol.1) #287 as Kryptonian juvenile delinquent who took Jor-El's warnings of Krypton's impending doom seriously enough to place himself in suspended animation in an orbiting space capsule.  

When the planet Krypton exploded, Dev-Em's ship was blasted into space, where it eventually landed on Earth. Dev-Em imprisoned Superboy in the Phantom Zone and assumed his identity in an effort to destroy the Boy of Steel's reputation. Eventually he freed Superboy and departed from the twentieth century, traveling through time to finally settle on the more advanced Earth of the 30th century.

Dev-Em soon joined the Interstellar Counter-Intelligence Corps of the 30th century.  He was reluctantly offered membership in the Legion of Super-Heroes but turned it down.  Despite his occasionally abrasive nature, Dev-Em aided the Legion on several occasions, most notably in the "Great Darkness Saga" against Darkseid.