The Justice League Movie That Almost Was...

  

With all of the talk swirling around the upcoming Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice movie, as well as the Justice League follow up movies, it should be noted that these aren't the first movies that Warner Bros. planned to produce that involved the Justice League.  Back in 2007, there was a script that was given the go ahead by Warner Bros. called Justice League: Mortal.  They had a script, a cast of actors lined up, and had even began building set designs, and would have beat the Avengers to the theaters by a number of years.  So what happened?

Let's start with who was hired into each roll for the movie.  Here's a list of the actors and who they were going to portray:

Adam Brody as The Flash
Armie Hammer as Batman
Common as Green Lantern
DJ Cotrona as Superman
Megan Gale as Wonder Woman
Hugh Keays-Byrne as Martian Manhunter
Santiago Cabrera as Aquaman
Zoe Kasan as Iris Allen
Jay Baruchel as Maxwell Lord
Teresa Palmer as Talia al Ghul

That's a pretty impressive list of great actors!  So what was the movie going to be about?  The script was never released to the public, but Mike Cecchini who writes for denofgeek.com was able to look at the script and he said it was a very impressive read.  To start, he said that there were costumed superheroes from scene one all the way through until the end.  The Justice League had already been established at the start of the film, so much so that Wonder Woman was addressing the United Nations to tout the beginning of global peace.  At one point, even Alfred says to Bruce Wayne that crime in Gotham had been eliminated to the point of it just being a small nuisance.  The storyline sounded like it was told from the point of view of Barry Allen, who is sitting in a restaurant eating with Iris, while watching Wonder Woman on the television addressing the UN.  Of course, the good times wouldn't last, or else there wouldn't be a movie to be made, right?  Things start to go south when Martian Manhunter gets slipped something that causes him to burst into flames once his skin comes in contact with oxygen.  The rest of the Justice League rush to his aid, but when they do, each one of them is exposed to some nanotechnology that exploits each of their weaknesses.  Sound familiar?  It should.  WB Animation made a straight to DVD film based loosely on this storyline in Justice League: Doom.  So how does all of this happen?  Talia slips the tech into Batman's shorts during one of their romantic encounters, and Maxwell Lord is seeking revenge for all of the experiments that were performed on him by OMAC Project when he was a child.

Sounds pretty interesting, right?  It gets better.  The script was written by Michele and Kiernan Mulroney, who were the ones that wrote Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows and was going to be directed by George Miller, who most recently directed Mad Max: Fury Road.  So why didn't this film ever get made?  Like I said, there was a script, a cast, and they'd even begun to build set pieces and costumes for the film over at Weta Workshop with filming to be done down in Australia.  When George Miller was asked about it, he started off by stating the obvious, "Well, it's weird...":

"There was a writers strike. There was some legislation with a tax rebate to make it in Australia. It was the first film that came up, and there was a debate about whether it was Australian content even though I was driving it. It didn’t have to be Australian content, but Australian control. But there was a board that no longer exists that the government cobbled together from people who knew nothing about the film industry. And they voted -- they struck it down by one vote. We were all ready. Once that happened and then the writers’ strike happened…it fell apart."

There were also some worries about the film from Warner Bros. after the release of Superman Returns. The film failed to connect with audiences, and Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight was currently in production.  Warner Bros. were afraid to introduce a new Batman to theater goers while the other movies were still being produced.  And of course, the most obvious reason most films get shelved...money.

I wonder what the release of this version of the Justice League would have done to current explosion of superhero films that are now being released.  Would Marvel be the giant in the industry if this movie had ever been made?  Would Warner Bros. be the ones to catch?  I guess we'll never know...but it is fun to speculate!