David S Goyer Almost Made A DC Villains Movie Long Before Suicide Squad

It's almost becoming a cliche that everyone with the rights to a comic book property is making something focused predominantly on villains. Sony wanted to do it with Sinister Six (and Marvel still might), Warner Bros are doing it with Suicide Squad, Fox are doing it with their Hellfire TV show and it can only be a matter of time before someone at Marvel realises they need to make a Thunderbolts movie. But DC and Warner Bros were almost the hipsters who invented the paradigm almost ten years ago when David S Goyer penned a Green Arrow movie. That was the latest attempt to get a movie featuring the Robin Hood clone off the ground, though it was destined to fail thanks to - surprise, surprise - short-sighted studio executives. Green Arrow: Escape From Super Max would have seen the hero falsely imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit in the high security Super Max facility, where he sits shoulder to shoulder with a rogues gallery combining villains from Superman and Batman lore. As Goyer said in 2007:

"It's like Alcatraz and he has to team up with, in some cases, some of the very same villains he is responsible for incarcerating in order to get out and clear his name. Of course, tons of people try to kill him while he's in there." "We've populated the prison with all sorts of B and C villains from the DC Universe. For the fans, there will be all sorts of characters the hard-core comic book junkies will know, but they're all going to be there under their human names and no one is wearing a costume, but there will be a lot of characters with powers and things like that."

As Den Of Geek's excellent profile on the movie states, there would have been an Easter Egg nod to the Joker, and the film would have used Arkham Asylum: A Serious House On Serious Earth as the inspiration to the prison break story. It would also have set up a DC connected universe straight after Marvel released Iron Man, which was probably the right way to go. Unfortunately, and unfathomably, DC scrapped those plans and seemingly forgot about Escape From Super Max, and Green Arrow was freed up to appear on TV later on. While that show has its fans, having Arrow launched as a character in a film as cool sounding as Goyer's would have been incredible:

"Oh, we€™ve got Lex Luthor in there. I€™m pretty sure Riddler gets his shot €” Ed Nigma gets his moment. The Tattoo Man is in there which seemed like a no brainer if you're doing a movie about a super prison - having a character with super tattoos. Amanda Waller's in there as well, from the Suicide Squad."

So now all we have is a faint memory of what might have been: a hint of scenes like The Riddler testing Queen's skill and intellect, and Arrow having to advance through various pitched battles with villains like a modern riff on The Warriors. God damn, that's a good idea. Shame Warner Bros weren't on the ball back then, or we might have a much more interesting DC cinematic universe for the past ten years...