10 Cancelled Comic Book Movies That Sound Insanely Good
X-Men vs Fantastic Four?! WHY didn't we get that?
There have been some incredible near-misses in comic book movie history. Just imagine, for a minute, what might have been if Quentin Tarantino hadn't turned down Green Lantern in the early stages. Or if Guillermo Del Toro hadn't dropped out of Thor before Kenneth Branagh took it on... It's hard not to wonder wistfully.
And over the years, because studios have looked for every opportunity to milk the lucrative comic book movie cow, we've seen an incredible number of projects conceived, whether just in terms of early discussions or right up to movies that ended up in active production before being canned.
As a result, there's something of an elephant's graveyard of projects that could have been, and while some would have been disastrous, there's a good case for some of them being potentially genius.
10. Justice League Mortal
By the mid-2000s, Batman might have lost his way thanks to Joel Schumacher's creative marriage with Warner Bros, but that didn't dampen the studio's enthusiasm to make more DC Comics movie projects a reality. And as long as they thought there was life in Batman and Superman in any way, a Justice League movie was always going to happen.
Years before the DCEU mapped out its Justice League endgame, Mad Max director George Miller was hired to direct Justice League Mortal, which started casting in 2007, but was cancelled in 2008 indefinitely, partly thanks to necessary rewrites being rendered impossible by the 2007-2008 Writers Guild of America strike.
Despite the cancellation, it sounded great, with a cast led by Armie Hammer was cast as Batman, D.J. Cotrona as Superman, Common as Green Lantern, Adam Brody as The Flash, Anton Yelchin as The Flash (Wally West), Megan Gale as Wonder Woman, Santiago Cabrera as Aquaman, and Hugh Keays-Byrne as Martian Manhunter. It would have followed villain Maxwell Lord, who would hijack Batman's secret Brother Eye technology (built to spy on the other heroes) and a plan to turn everyone in the world into zombies powered by nanobots transmitted through fast food.
All brilliantly ludicrous.