Warner Bros teaming up with Bad Robot to adapt Justice League Dark into movie and TV series

Warner Bros is finally starting to find some success with their DC properties following films like Wonder Woman, Shazam!, Aquaman, and even the unexpected Joker all proving successful with critics and at the box office. This recent run might be enabling them to reconsider some of the DC properties that they’ve previously failed to build on and turn those into similar successes too.

One such property is Justice League Dark which the studio has wanted to adapt for many years, but never quite been able to make the idea stick. One of the possible reasons has been that the Justice League Dark team – which includes DC Comics supernatural characters like John Constantine, Madame Xanadu, Deadman, Shade the Changing Man, Zatanna, Swamp Thing, and more – and their magically-infused exploits had previously been considered too dark and possibly risky at the box office. Joker has clearly shown that there’s a market for dark and risky comic book fare, even if it was as far removed from a traditional comic book movie as can be.

Perhaps they also just never found the right pitch or this newfound confidence is allowing them to take more risks, but according to a Deadline report, the studio is finally ready to revisit the property. As part of WB’s recent massive co-production deal with JJ Abrams’ Bad Robot, the production studio is now reportedly in the early stages of adapting the Justice League Dark comics into both a movie and a TV series. There’s no word yet though on whether the Star Wars director himself will be taking a hand in things or even stepping behind the camera, but Bad Robot’s Head of Motion Pictures Hannah Minghella and Head of Television Ben Stephenson are reportedly in the early stages of meeting with potential talent for the two respective adaptations.

WB has previously buddied up with other talented filmmakers, like Guillermo del Toro and Doug Liman, to give these darker, more horror-tinged DC Comics characters a live-action adaptation, but those efforts kept falling apart. The studio is hoping that this time they found the right partner with Abrams and co. Considering Abrams’ love and ability to adapt popular franchises like Star Trek and Star Wars, he could be a good fit. He, along with his production team have a knack for pulling through on their ideas and making them into bigger franchises. It also has to be mentioned that the most recent incarnation of the Justice League Dark team is actually led up by none other than Wonder Woman, which could be the perfect character to introduce audiences to this side of the DC Comics universe on the big screen.

There are no release dates yet for any Justice League Dark productions, though considering the DC slate is full until the release of Aquaman 2 in 2022, we could likely only see the fruits of this collaboration coming our way in 2023. More than enough time to map out the plans for several Justice League Dark adaptation and hopefully make this supernatural superhero team-up finally happen on the screen.  

Last Updated: January 22, 2020