We’ve seen over the past decade that Warner Bros. isn’t entirely sure about what to do with their Justice League properties, with multiple attempts from television movies in the eighties to the (sigh) Snyder Cut. What many don’t realize is that there were attempts to bring Justice League to life long before 2016 when Batman vs. Superman gave the first big-screen assembly of the DC Trinity.
George Miller, director of the hit Mad Max franchise as well as Happy Feet and Babe (the man has range!) was originally supposed to bring the Justice League to life in 2007 with the tentatively titled Justice League: Mortal. The film would see the League already formed, teaming up to take down the villainous Maxwell Lord before some world-ending disaster can happen. The plot of the film was mostly kept under wraps, with only hints that it was adapted from the JLA: Tower of Babel run from 2000.
Though Justice League: Mortal would never truly leave pre-production, there was a chosen cast, finished script, and even storyboards and costume designs that have been uncovered in the years since then. Most notable is the casting, which was geared at the time toward smaller, less-known actors. Bruce Wayne was to be played by Armie “The Eat-her” Hammer, with Barry Allen attached to Adam Brody and even a pre-Star Trek Anton Yelchin as Wally West. Even the villainous Maxwell Lord, most recently played by Pedro Pascal in Wonder Woman 84. Though it seems that this Wonder Woman iteration is over after Pedro chewed all the scenery involved.
So what the hell happened? There were scenes storyboarded that showed Superman having an all-out brawl with Wonder Woman as he was being controlled by Maxwell Lord, and this could have been a massive hit, especially in 2007 before superhero fatigue had a chance to rear its head. Then the WGA went on strike (that sounds familiar) and the project was put on hold just before production was set to begin in Australia. Producers were supposedly eager to resume production after the strike ended but wanted to move production to Canada instead of Australia, despite Aussie native George Miller’s protest.
As Hollywood goes, production was ground to a halt and rewrites were demanded on the script to “perfect it”, which is ironic since the producers said the finished script from a year before was perfect. It’s still unknown exactly what they wanted to be perfected, but hopefully it wasn’t producer John Peters requesting a giant spider fight again. The production stalled once more, with actors and crew left unaware of the fate their film may meet. Their worst fears would be confirmed months later.
Warner Bros. kept trying to salvage some sense of Justice League, bouncing around ideas of spinning off from Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy and keeping Christian Bale as Batman while also bringing in Ryan Reynolds as Hall Jordan, until the Green Lantern movie released and those plans were unanimously scrapped. Warner tried and tried, announcing new films for every character possible to try and emulate an Avengers situation at Marvel, all to no avail. Eventually, the studio gave a unanimous “F*ck it” and decided to branch off of Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel. We all see how that worked out in the long run, as the DC movie universe is in a period of eternal flux that will hopefully be leveled out as James Gunn moves in to oversee things.
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