Up until last year, Zack Snyder’s Justice League was the most famous unmade movie starring DC’s iconic all-star team of superheroes, but George Miller’s Justice League: Mortal has since reascended to the throne after HBO Max turned the long-held dream into a reality.
It’s fascinating to think just how close the Mad Max creator came to calling action on his $220 million epic, with an entire principal cast in place, storyboards completed, a crew assembled, and costume fittings well underway before the plug was pulled just months before a planned shoot in the summer of 2008.
Stop us if you’ve heard this one before, but Warner Bros. executives canned the project after getting cold feet, with the success of Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy putting them off the idea of having multiple versions of iconic DC favorites existing at the same time, even if Joker and The Batman have proven that it’s no longer a concern.
In the midst of the latest widespread backlash being aimed by the fandom towards the DCEU regime, Redditors have been gazing wistfully at just how close Mortal came to exploding out of the blocks, only to be cast into the throes of development hell forever.
Looking at the lineup through a 2022 lends is as fascinating as it is tragic, though. The disgraced Armie Hammer would have played Batman, Shazam! stars D.J. Cotrona and Adam Brody were lined up as Superman and the Flash, Megan Good would have been Wonder Woman, Common was set as Green Lantern, Jay Baruchel was poised to break bad as Maxwell Lord, with the late Anton Yelchin and Hugh Keays-Byrne set as Wally West and Martian Hunter, respectively.
Instead, Justice League: Mortal lives forever as one of the most famous movies that was never made.