Warner Bros Developing Justice League Movie, Screenwriter Hired
Gangster Squad's Will Beall is developing the script that would likely unite Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, The Flash and Wonder Woman on screen for the first time.
Less than two months after we said it was inevitable after the enormous $1.3 billion success of Marvel's "The Avengers", Warner Bros have revived plans to bring "The Justice League of America" to the big screen. Variety reports that "Gangster Squad" screenwriter & former LA cop Will Beall will provide the ensemble screenplay that will likely feature Batman, Superman, The Flash, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern and other possible DC Comics characters in the same movie. Details are scarce at this stage over what the approach will be and not even the superheroes we have named above are confirmed. For example, WB may plan to do a JLA movie without Batman or without Green Lantern... we can't entirely say for sure. As ever with DC then we have more questions than answers. Previously we heard that a "Justice League" movie was likely to begin development after "The Dark Knight Rises" is released next month but then Variety claims that Beall was actually hired last year to develop the script when Marvel were filming "The Avengers". This would suggest they could have a finished screenplay already and a firm plan of executing this ambitious ensemble... and could even mean that casting and a hiring of a director is close. The plan as of last year was for WB to have two on screen Batmans, one in an entirely new reboot of the franchise and a separate Batman that would exist in a Justice League movie. It was also hinted that a Summer 2013 release was in the offing and although that looks unlikely now, we could definitely see a Summer 2014 release come together. We also heard then that the JLA movie would have no connection to Zack Snyder's Superman movie "Man of Steel" or Ryan Reynolds' outing as "Green Lantern", but again WB change their minds on an regular basis over the best way to approach this. I imagine at this stage "Man of Steel" will be the launching pad for a bigger onscreen universe to feature Henry Cavill with Reynolds' Lantern also involved but not Christian Bale's Batman, but that's just speculation on my part. The only thing that is definite is that WB have paid money on a writer to come up with a way of making the "Justice League" work on film for the first since 2007 when George Miller looked close to making a stand-alone Justice League universe.