Man Of Steel filmmaker Zack Snyder has opened up about the process that led to Batman appearing in the sequel to his Superman reboot.

Speaking to Forbes, the director revealed that the caped crusader seemed to logical choice as the next adversary for Superman after General Zod.

He said: "I gotta be honest, it definitely was a thing that… after Man of Steel finished and we started talking about what would be in the next movie, I started subtly mentioning that it would be cool if he faced Batman. In the first meeting, it was like, 'Maybe Batman?'

"Maybe at the end of the second movie, some Kryptonite gets delivered to Bruce Wayne's house or something. Like in a cryptic way, that's the first time we see him.

"But then, once you say it out loud, right? You're in a story meeting talking about, like, who should Superman fight if he fought this giant alien threat Zod who was basically his equal physically, from his planet, fighting on our turf... You know, who to fight next?

"The problem is, once you say it out loud, then it's kind of hard to go back, right? Once you say, 'What about Batman?' then you realise, 'Okay, that's a cool idea. What else?' I mean, what do you say after that?"

But he insisted that he hadn't taken the Man Of Steel gig as a way to get his mitts on Batman.

"But I'm not gonna say at all that when I took the job to do Man of Steel that I did it in a subversive way to get to Batman. I really believe that only after contemplating who could face Superman did Batman come into the picture."

The sequel to Man Of Steel - provisionally titled Batman Vs Superman - is set for release in May 2016, with Ben Affleck controversially playing Batman against Henry Cavill's Superman.