In a letter to the fan community posted on the Kryptonsite Website, Smallville producers Al Gough and Miles Millar announced that they are leaving the DC comics-based TV series after seven seasons and 152-episodes.  The CW recently renewed Smallville for the series' eighth season (see "Smallville Renewed for 8th Season"), which many believe will be the longest-running-show-on-the-CW-network's last go-round. Whatever the fate of Smallville, it is now clear that the series' eighth season will be its first without Gough and Millar.

Gough and Millar are proud of their achievement on Smallville, which they call "the longest-running comic book-based series of all time," noting that the pilot episode set the ratings record for the WB network, and that even in its seventh season, Smallville remains the highest-rated scripted series on the CW network.

Smallville has spawned a fair amount of merchandise including trading cards from Inkworks, a DC Comics comic book, a series of young-adult novels, six full season DVD sets (so far), and several popular soundtrack compilations.

Gough and Millar, whose film credits include Spider-Man 2 and the upcoming The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Empire, plan to concentrate their future efforts on the production of feature films.  The duo recently completed a rewrite on the script for the Jungle Cruise feature film that Disney hopes will replicate the success of another amusement park-ride turned movie tentpole -- Pirates of the Caribbean.