George Miller's aborted Justice League movie: what went wrong?

In an alternate dimension, Armie Hammer’s role in Call Me by Your Name would have been a risky departure for an actor best known for playing Batman. Mad Max: Fury Road may never have happened. And Megan Gale would have been a name on everybody’s lips.

These were elements of Justice League: Mortal, an early incarnation of the Justice League movie that spectacularly flamed out last week, which was once set for a 2009 release under the directorial eye of George Miller, last seen receiving accolades for his belated 2015 Mad Max sequel.

Hollywood projects falling apart over time are nothing new, but Miller’s Justice League very nearly happened. By the time the film had been axed by Warner Bros over issues with its budget, its stars and its script, an array of actors had been cast, costumes had been designed and production was about to begin. It remains one of Hollywood’s most infamous unmade films.

Information about the proposed movie has been leaked in anecdotes and concept art here and there over the years, forming a remarkable picture of a slightly muddled - if undeniably intriguing - comic book movie that never came to be.

The film’s script, leaked online in 2013 and credited to married writing duo Michele and Kieran Mulroney, depicted Batman as an untrustworthy and vaguely dictatorial crime fighter who creates a surveillance machine known as the Brother Eye, which would monitor the Justice League of America and fellow super-powered civilians. This, surprise-surprise, would fall into the villainous hands of businessman Maxwell Lord, who would hijack the machine and create killer robots to battle the team.

Justice League: Mortal somewhat oddly positioned The Flash as its central character, who would later sacrifice his life to save the day in the film’s final face-off. In addition, as Maxwell Lord actor Jay Baruchel told the Happy Sad Confused podcast this summer, Superman would turn evil over the course of the film and battle Wonder Woman.

“I turn him into full red-eye Superman,” Baruchel recalled. “And then there’s this big-ass fight between him and Wonder Woman, where he breaks her f------ wrists and s---, and then I die halfway through the movie, and then my consciousness is uploaded into a f------ mainframe and I’m an evil computer.”

Production art, prosthetic tests and storyboards have leaked over the years, one by artist Steve Skroce depicting the aforementioned Superman/Wonder Woman fight (though he has since deleted the images), and others depicting Aquaman in costume and Wonder Woman’s home of Themyscira.

Adam Brody

A documentary about the aborted film was also in the works, but its Twitter account hasn’t been active since 2016 and its Facebook page has been removed, with filmmaker Ryan Unicomb silent on the project ever since he told If.com that he was seeking permission to use characters and images from Warner Bros.

This incarnation of Justice League was developed at a particularly hopeful time for DC Comics and Warner Bros, who had achieved success with Batman Begins, the first entry in Christopher Nolan’s acclaimed Batman trilogy, and were about to launch a fresh take on the Superman mythos courtesy of Bryan Singer.

In September 2007, inspired by the Mulroney script, Miller had signed on to direct the superhero team-up movie, and quickly began to assemble his cast. Looking back at the various breathless casting reports at the time is like taking a glance at the young Hollywood of 2007 in microcosm.

There was Adam Brody, fresh from his role in The OC. Jessica Biel and Mary Elizabeth Winstead were both linked to Wonder Woman; the cast of Friday Night Lights read for numerous roles; and rapper Common auditioned at a time when he was eager to break into acting. One-time big-deals including Shannyn Sossamon, Michael Angarano and Joseph Cross were also accounted for during auditions.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, Miller was specifically looking for young actors who would be able to “grow into their roles over the course of several movies.” They were also noticeably less expensive than the ensembles of Batman Begins and Superman Returns.

Ultimately cast were Armie Hammer as Batman, TV actor DJ Cotrona as Superman, Australian model Megan Gale as Wonder Woman, Common as Green Lantern, Brody as The Flash, the late Anton Yelchin as his nephew Wally West, Heroes actor Santiago Cabrera as Aquaman and George Miller regular Hugh Keays-Byrne as the Martian Manhunter. Other roles cast included The Big Sick’s Zoe Kazan as The Flash’s love interest Iris Allen, Stephen Tobolowsky as Alfred Pennyworth, Teresa Palmer as Talia al Ghul and Judd Apatow regular Jay Baruchel as villain Maxwell Lord.

As Hammer told Vulture in 2010, Miller’s pre-production work on the film had been extensive. “They had pre-vizzed a lot of the special-effects sequences, and we saw some of the fight sequences without even having filmed them yet.”

He continued: “There was a giant room that he had turned into the storyboard room — this huge conference room that had floor-to-ceiling storyboards on the walls — and you’d start at one point and just walk around the entire room and by the time you were done, it was frame-for-frame the entire movie. We saw it on paper and we were going to bring it to life, we just never got the chance.”

The actors had also tried on their costumes, with Hammer describing his Batman costume as having been made from incredibly luxury fabrics. “His utility belt was made from the finest Italian leather and highly polished, and the things that would come out of his forearm, they were titanium but wrapped in very fine leather.” He also revealed that his Batman would have been the first to be able to turn his head in his cowl.

An impending writer’s strike had rushed the film into production based on just a few drafts of a script, but as work began, Warner Bros reportedly got cold feet. There had long been concerns about a Justice League movie potentially confusing the marketplace, particularly as the Christopher Nolan trilogy was in full swing. That had been publicly exacerbated months earlier, when Batman star Christian Bale told reporters that he had not been contacted to play the Caped Crusader in the film, and declared that “It’d be better if [Justice League] doesn’t tread on the toes of what our Batman series is doing.”

According to the New York Times, the Mulroneys journeyed to Australia in March 2008 to work on the script with Miller, amid concerns that “the screenplay did not quite meet the challenge of introducing a new series without undercutting the old ones.” The delay in production also meant options on the cast lapsed, allowing them to sign up to other work. This wasn’t a pressing concern, however, as they had reportedly bonded with Miller during trips to his Australian home and were all eager to film the movie.

But another problem was on the horizon: namely that the film could no longer be shot in Australia. Miller, who has rarely directed films outside of his native country, was counting on a 40 per cent tax rebate from the Australian government, who would help finance the film in exchange for the work the project would bring to the country. At a reported cost of $250 million, Justice League would have been largely unthinkable without state help.

Australia’s federal government eventually declared Justice League would not receive the 40% rebate, citing a perceived lack of Australian actors in the main cast (that was despite Gale, Palmer and Keays-Byrne all hailing from Down Under). As a result, Warner Bros suspended production.

An outraged Miller told the Sydney Morning Herald: “A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the Australian film industry is being frittered away because of very lazy thinking. If that’s going to be the final decision, they’re throwing away hundreds of millions of dollars of investment that the rest of the world is competing for and, much more significantly, highly skilled creative jobs.”

In light of the decision, production was moved to Canada, with Warner Bros aiming to start shooting in July 2008 for a summer 2009 release. But July came and went, and on the heels of the enormous critical and commercial success of Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, released that month, Warner Bros and DC decided to regroup.

“We’re not off the notion of a Justice League,” president of WB production Jeff Robinov told Variety at the time. “There’s a massive interest and knowledge in the comic book industry and it takes time to sort of catch up and understand the characters and the history, where they’ve intersected with each other and what their worlds are. That’s part of the education that we’re going through.”

The senior VP of creative affairs for DC Comics, Gregory Noveck, added: “These are big, iconic characters. So when you make them into a movie, you’d better be shooting for a pretty high standard. You’re not always going to reach it, but you have to be shooting for it. We’re going to make a Justice League movie, whether it’s now or 10 years from now. But we’re not going to do it and Warners is not going to do it until we know it’s right.”

By the end of 2008, Justice League was as good as dead, and Miller announced on Australian television that he had left the project. Declaring that he was no longer involved “in any capacity”, he also implied that the low-wattage of the cast was also a factor, claiming that the studio “seems to want bigger stars in their superhero movies now.”

In the years that have passed, several cast members have spoken about the project, with a mix of both sadness over what they felt was a missed opportunity, as well as a slight shrug over its eventual demise.

“For a long time, I was like, ‘How great that could have been!’” Hammer told Vulture this month. “[But] as a 31-year-old who’s been through a lot since I was 19, I wouldn’t want to watch a 19-year-old Batman. I’d be like, ‘Who’s this spoiled rich kid who wants to play dress-up?’”

“I used to be upset we didn’t get to do it, but everything happens exactly as it’s supposed to,” he continued. “I still have a lot of learning to do about this, and it’s a constant pursuit for me. If I had been that successful right out of the gate, I would have thought I already understood it all. I know that I wouldn’t have turned in a great performance, or even a good performance — it would have just been whatever. So I’m glad.”

“It was a great script, and it was a great director,” Adam Brody told HeyUGuys in 2013. “I’m not saying it would have changed the world, but that movie would have worked, I will say that. [It] would have been a nice little movie I think, but they [Warner Brothers] just didn’t want to cross their streams with a whole bunch of Batmans in the universe and all the other reasons they didn’t make it.

“I will say that I don’t have any particular affinity for the Flash. I grew up reading comic books, and loving them, and I still have a fondness for them. Although the older I get, the more saturated the marketplace gets, I find the less I care as a whole.”

Even Miller has been slightly “meh” on its lack of existence. “It was very faithful to the comics at the time, very DCU,” he told the Word Balloon podcast. “Ultimately I think it’s good that it didn’t come out as there were some parts that were cool that they got right and there were some things that people were going to hate. Some of it was very aimed at kids.”

Speaking to Australia’s Channel Nine, Gale had a slightly warmer response: “As long as my son thinks I’m Wonder Woman [I'm fine],” Gale told “If that means I’m ‘super-mum’, I’m fine.”

Along with crediting the film for her friendship with Miller, who would later cast her in Mad Max: Fury Road, she also spoke proudly of a photograph she took in costume that was leaked online in 2015. “It was a really lovely surprise, because I hadn’t seen it for seven years. We were just doing costume trials. We just did full dress, costume and hair and wardrobe, and we did a photo shoot. But I’m glad that we got that far into production that we had those photos!”

Miller’s departure from Justice League was met with odd celebration by fans, who had taken to slamming the director as “just the guy who did Happy Feet” and mocking his casting choices. The fresh-faced, all-American Hammer, then a complete unknown, had been repeatedly dubbed “Frat-Man”.

“Since he was announced as the director of Justice League, I’ve grown to dislike him and his idiotic casting choices,” wrote Alex Billington of First Showing in 2008. “I couldn’t be happier that he’s no longer involved!”

In hindsight, such a reaction is slightly embarrassing. On paper, Justice League: Mortal had story issues, while the timing of its intended release and its lack of relationship with the Nolan trilogy indicated a lack of thinking on the part of Warner Bros bosses… something that has been replicated ever since.

But Miller would also go on to direct one of the 21st century’s most relentlessly exciting and justifiably heralded blockbusters in the form of Mad Max: Fury Road, and it remains intriguing to imagine what he would have done with the superhero genre.

In light of Zack Snyder’s nonsensically grim adaptations and the Joss Whedon snark crudely stuck onto it with scotch tape, it really couldn’t have been much worse.

“It was allegorical, like a story of Greek Gods almost,” Cotrona told Slashfilm in 2015. “He was doing things with the Superman character and Batman character, and all the iconic favourites, that’s never been done before. Watch Fury Road and you can only imagine what he would do with those iconic characters.”