Justice League: Mortal - What Really Happened?

Before Fury Road, George Miller had DC's biggest superhero team.

by Ewan Paterson
Justice League Mortal
Warner Bros.

Long before Zack Snyder and Joss Whedon would 'Unite the Seven' in 2017's Justice League, Warner Bros. attempted to do the same almost a decade earlier with George Miller, the architect behind the Mad Max franchise.

Dubbed Justice League: Mortal, the film was originally meant to premiere between 2008-09 and would've been the first genuine superhero ensemble to release on the big screen (Mystery Men notwithstanding). A then 22-year-old Armie Hammer was set to play Batman, Common would've donned the role of Green Lantern and the team in question would have had far more in common with their animated series counterpart (save for the lack of Hawkgirl), than it did with the League's earlier incarnations.

Right at the centre of it all would've been Miller's signature charm, telling a story inspired by the then recent Tower of Babel (Mark Waid/Howard Porter), as well as 2008's Infinite Crisis (Geoff Johns et al.), with Maxwell Lord set to feature as the film's principle antagonist.

But where did it all go wrong? With scheduling conflicts, an uncommitted studio, and even an uncooperative Oceanic country to deal with, the reasons for Mortal's cancellation are myriad and intriguing, and perhaps even a little tragic too.

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Content Producer/Presenter

WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.