So yesterday we got word that comic scribe and Fox creative consultant Mark Millar thought that outside of being caught out for using your super golfing powers to pull lots of porntastic tail and then having to give your Swedish wife half in the ensuing divorce settlement, Warner Bros\DC Comics’ Justice League movie was actually the quickest way to lose hundreds of millions of dollars.
And if the rumours are true then it seems that somebody over at WB may just have agreed with him.
After being stuck in developmental limbo for ages, things were starting to look up Justice League last year, but there was always one giant obstacle that Warner Bros had to overcome: Not copying Marvel.
See Marvel cracked the code, they figured out the formula: how to make a superhero mash-up movie work. The trick is to introduce all the principal members beforehand in their own solo adventures and then having them assemble for your big finale film.
The problem is that DC clearly don’t want to be seen as copying their biggest rival, so instead they decided to do things ass-backwards with Justice League being the kick-off point, before then spinning off into individual stories. But how do you write a script for a big rock ’em, sock ’em superheropalooza, when you still need to spend time introducing a whole bunch of new characters and fleshing out their backstories? That was the quandary screen writer Will Beall found himself in, and according to Bad Ass Digest’s sources, one he couldn’t get out of.
“I’ve now heard from multiple sources that the Will Beall script for Justice League has been scrapped. The story from each source is the same: it’s terrible.”
They go on to indicate that the stinkiness of the script is why Warner Bros has not been able to land a top class director for the gig yet, and some of their sources even indicate that at this point, Warner Bros may just be considering throwing in the towel completely and calling it a day. A day where they’re not making Avengers level money, that is.
Beall’s script was supposed to focus on the cosmic threat of Darkseid, the biggest of bads in the DC universe, and last we heard the roster of heroes that would be facing him was Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash and Green Lantern. But apparently that roster had a revolving door on it, as numerous heroes were tossed out and re-added at behest of flip-flopping WB execs.
Now I know this may be hard for you, as you’ve probably blocked the memory subconsciously, but if you’ll remember, Warner Bros’ last big superhero outing, Green Lantern, was utterly destroyed by executive interference to the point that director Martin Campbell (an usually super talented director who gave us Goldeneye and Casino Royale among others) vowed that he would never come back for a sequel, irrespective of how much money or critical success the film received. In the end it got very little of either, so no worries Campbell.
This has always been the biggest difference between Marvel and DC though. Whereas Marvel created their own studios run by comic book geeks for comic book geeks, DC is controlled by a cadre of bland-suited Warner Bros executives who are entirely about that four quadrant hit rate.
The last report before this was that Justice League is in a holding pattern until Warner Bros can gauge the success of Zack Snyder’s upcoming Superman reboot, Man of Steel. Somehow I get the feeling though, that this plane is about to fall out of the sky.
Last Updated: February 8, 2013
