9. Justice League: Mortal
What Was It: If ever there was proof that Warner Brothers has no idea how to manage a superhero universe, look no further than Justice League: Mortal. Even with Smallville still airing on TV, plans underway for Bryan Singer's sequel to Superman Returns, and Nolan beginning work on The Dark Knight, Warner Brothers still felt the time was right for a Justice League movie that was not connected to any of those other projects. Helmed by Mad Max director George Miller, the movie was to be shot in a kind of motion-capture style along the lines of Beowulf. The plot revolved around a paranoid Batman launching Brother Eye to monitor metahumans across the world and, if necessary, terminate them. Maxwell Lord and the OMACs would have been the primary villains and the Flash would have been the focus of the film's story. We previously covered the leaked script, which would have featured a cast of (at the time) mostly unknown young actors, with the idea that they would grow into the roles over timeArmie Hammer as Batman, D.J. Cotrona as Superman, Common as Green Lantern, Adam Brody as the Flash, Anton Yelchin as Wally West, Megan Gale as Wonder Woman, Santiago Cabrera as Aquaman, and Hugh Keays-Byrne as the Martian Manhunter.
What Happened: A ballooning budget, a denied tax rebate for Warner Brothers, and the writers strike all converged like the Legion of Doom to put a stop to Miller's plans to bring the Justice League to life. In some ways, it may have been a good thinga Justice League movie that still had competing Superman and Batman franchises with zero connection between the three (including different actors in the roles) might prove to be confusing for viewers.