Justice League: Mortal - What Really Happened?

2. What Went Wrong?

Justice League Mortal Superman Wonder Woman
Warner Bros.

Unfortunately, by the time The Dark Knight came around, Warner Bros. decided there was little sense in pursuing Miller's Justice League, which had suffered from countless delays by that point and seemingly threatened to step on the toes of Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy.

At the time, and even today, to an extent, Warner Bros. have always been worried about the idea of there being multiple versions of DC's characters on the big or small screens at once. A planned Bruce Wayne origin series was shelved in the run up to Batman Begins' release due to fears that audiences would get confused by the idea of there being two Bat-men, and though Smallville managed to survive Superman Returns, it likely only managed to do so due to its following, as well as the fact it had already been running for five years by the time that film had released.

Point being, although Mortal had a lot of traction for a period of time, its eventual cancellation wasn't as surprising as it probably should've been. WB have never been keen on the idea of multiple incarnations of a character appearing on the screen at once, which is why - even today - Gotham isn't allowed to explicitly reference Joker or Harley Quinn.

Apart from that, Mortal's delayed production eventually meant that its budget had ballooned to an estimated $300 million, something Warner Bros. weren't exactly keen to indulge after Superman Returns tanked just two years earlier.

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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.