With "Green Lantern" tanking and disappointing last summer, "The Dark Knight Rises" putting Batman to bed (for now), and the verdict still out on "Man Of Steel" next year, Warner Bros. is looking pretty short on comic book heroes to exploit. But they've got an ace up their sleeve in "Justice League." A movie they've been trying to get off the ground for years (more on that in a moment), the studio is undoubtedly looking at Marvel's $1.3 billion worldwide haul for "The Avengers" and drooling. You call that a team up movie? How about one with Superman and Batman in the same damn movie? So no surprise they are giving it another go.
Variety reports that "Gangster Squad" writer Will Beall is penning a new draft and interestingly he was actually hired last year while "The Avengers" was filming. Apparently, WB were anticipating the Marvel movie to do big business and wanted to be prepared. Either way, this is big news for comic fans and certainly good for the studio who are also without the ever reliable 'Harry Potter' franchise for the first time in several years. The success of "The Avengers" is certainly an incentive for them to continue pushing forward.
As comic fans know, "Justice League" already came close to being made once already. In 2008 cameras were set to roll on a George Miller directed movie that would have had Armie Hammer as Batman, Adam Brody as The Flash, D.J. Cotrona as Superman, rapper Common as John Stewart/Green Lantern, and Australian supermodel Megan Gale as Wonder Woman. But the script needed one last polish and the late 2007-2008 writer's strike pretty much killed the movie.
And don't expect Christian Bale or Henry Cavill to appear. It's widely been expected that Warner Bros. will cast fresh faces in the roles of Batman and Superman and last year, Zack Snyder revealed that neither "Man Of Steel" or "The Dark Knight Rises" storylines will tie into a proposed "Justice League" movie.
So now that we have a writer, the next step will be a find a director and you can bet everyone will have an opinion on that. It will be a big job as someone will be juggling some extremely iconic characters all at once. It will be interesting to see what names surface…