It’s been a slow 7-8 days on the entertainment front other than the few headlines that emerged last week, but here are a few items of notice that appeared over the weekend: (side-note: you’ll all be proud of me, as I pulled the trigger on a couple of the Hellboy library editions on Friday. I’d never read word one of those comics before, so it’s been quite the treat!)
– We’ve reported on it a few times, but yesterday, the team behind the planned documentary on George Miller‘s Justice League: Mortal released a number of pieces of concept art from the film and while none of it ever actually got used, it’s a neat peek at what might have been:
Comics Artist Steve Scroce, who worked on the film, also shared some storyboards featuring a battle between Superman and Wonder Woman, which you can see a sample of below:
– THR reports that Sony is still screen-testing potential Spider-Man actors in Atlanta, where Captain America: Civil War is filming and the new Peter Parker is expected to debut. Despite earlier reports that Asa Butterfield had locked down the role, it seems that its still wide-open to a few possibilities, including: Charlie Rowe (Red Band Society), Matthew Lintz (Pixels), Charlie Plummer (Boardwalk Empire), Judah Lewis (Demolition), and the previously reported Tom Holland and Butterfield.
Apparently, we’ll have an answer as to who will be filling the role by this week.
– This is totally not comics related, though they do make comics of Game of Thrones, so perhaps it’s slightly on-topic. But last night’s episode of the HBO series was incredible, and probably one of the best episodes of the entire run. One little trivia note that I quite enjoyed was a cameo appearance by Atlanta based metal act Mastodon, of whom co-showrunner D.B. Weiss is a big fan. Here’s a picture of some of the members in a scene that’s probably a little spoilery, so I’ll leave a gap…
In a previous life, I played in a band that had a practice space in the same building as Mastodon, it was amazing getting to hear them play during the week as I walked by their door.
Funny enough, this isn’t the first time musicians have appeared on Game of Thrones, in Season 3, Coldplay drummer Will Champion appeared during the infamous “Red Wedding”.
And Icelandic art-rockers Sigur Rós showed up in Season 4 during King Joffrey’s equally attention grabbing wedding:
I’m really hoping for an appearance by The National in Season 6.
George Miller‘s Mad Max: Fury Road has been a nice moderate hit, accumulating 95 million over the past 11 days, with word of mouth continuing to be strong and rightfully so.
One of the big social discussion points I’ve seen floating around since its release are articles with titles like: “We could have had a George Miller Justice League!”, and it’s true, the auteur behind the Mad Max series was indeed in place to direct the big DC team-up, entitled Justice League: Mortal, that would have seen release just a year after Christopher Nolan‘s The Dark Knight.
Even a few of his cast members from that film appear in Fury Road such as Megan Gale who was signed up for Wonder Woman, and Hugh Keays-Byrne who was intended to play Martian Manhunter. The rest of the cast, which included Armie Hammer (Batman), Common (Green Lantern), Adam Brody (The Flash), DJ Cotrona (Superman), Jay Baruchel (Max Lord), and Santiago Cabrera (Aquaman) contained varying levels of inspiration and exasperation. A number of factors have been cited for why the film wasn’t able to beat Marvel’s The Avengers to the box office, including Nolan not wanting competing, unconnected Dark Knights on the big screen at the same time, a rising budget, and the writer’s strike of 2007-2008.
The biggest problem though? The script just wasn’t very good. At least not the draft I read, which was presumably the final one before production was scrapped. It was basically The OMAC Project combined with Tower of Babel combined with Crisis on Infinite Earths #8, along with an ill-advised fast food plot and some strikingly bad dialogue. This thing would have likely killed your Justice League dreams quicker than you could say “Ryan Reynolds‘ Green Lantern“.
But, much like the documentary feature that will cover the disastrous production cycle that marked Tim Burton‘s Superman Lives, another team is looking to do the same for Justice League: Mortal.
Australian director Ryan Unicomb, along with producers Aaron Cater and Steven Caldwell, are aiming to cover what might have been with a documentary entitled, appropriately enough, Miller’s Justice League: Mortal. According to Unicomb, they have investors in place already and may turn to crowdfunding as well.
The filmmaker briefly spoke with Inside Film about the project:
We wanted to get the story out there to help us to gauge interest. I have always been fascinated with project, which would be in the same vein as 2013’s Jodorowsky’s Dune and this year’s The Death of Superman Lives: What Happened?
There’s no current timetable for release, and they’ve yet to approach Miller about the project. Hopefully they’ll be able to secure his participation, as I’m sure the story behind this initial Justice League attempt would prove fascinating.
Warner Bros, for their part, will be finally releasing a Justice League film in 2017, directed by Zack Snyder.
It’s time to hop in the “Way Way Back Machine”, all the way to 2007 when Mad Max mastermind George Miller had lined up his cast for Warner Bros’ first attempt at a big screen interpretation of the Justice League. Entitled Justice League: Mortal, Miller’s film would have seen new versions of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Martian Manhunter, The Flash, and Green Lantern team up to take on Max Lord. The important part of the tale: in the role of Green Lantern was Hip Hop Artist Common, who at the time only had one film and a few television appearances to his credit.
Justice League: Mortal died on the vine after entering pre-production, being tabled due to shooting location tax issues and poor buzz surrounding the script. Once The Dark Knight happened, it was all basically forgotten anyway.
Common went on to become an Oscar winning songwriter and appear in a number of films since, as well as having a starring role in the AMC drama Hell on Wheels. But, as Henry Cavill learned when he was cast as Superman after losing out on the role the first time to Brandon Routh, if a studio is hot on you, there’s always a chance they’ll find another spot.
Thusly, THR is reporting that Common has been cast in Suicide Squad in an undisclosed role. Production has already begun on the picture in Toronto, and the cast had their initial table read of the script already, so it’s possible that his role is not a particularly large one (for this film anyway) or the script is being rewritten to accommodate him. Who really knows? Bronze Tiger has been the popular guess among the superhero movie beat, but that seems like too easy a guess.
Perhaps John Stewart is making a pre-Justice League appearance? Wouldn’t that be funny?
Suicide Squad opens on August 5, 2016. Common is repped by CAA and Myman Greenspan.
Jay Baruchel as Max Lord?!? Maybe I just don’t have the imagination but I cannot conceive of a way that would have ever worked.
I’m waiting for the documentary about why Terry Gilliam’s WATCHMEN never happened. Or one about why James Cameron’s SPIDER-MAN didn’t get made.
As for that Justice League movie, all the proposed actors skewed really young. They seemed to be casting a Teen Titans movie.
We don’t need this documentary and I don’t think it will get made.
The MIller JLA film didn’t happen for a sipmle reason. the script was awful. Awful. impossibly unbelievably bad. You don’t need a 2 hour documentary to realize that.
read teh script yourself.
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B4tilNmOgu5TRk9VMHU2QVdsaWc/edit
@AwesomeDude: I know it’s right there in the headline, but I don’t see a documentary about an aborted film as being limited to the “Why didn’t this get made?” question. There are plenty of other questions — what would it have looked like, how far did it get? — that could make for a fascinating subject even if the movie itself was spectacularly wrongheaded. Which is the entire idea behind the Superman Lives documentary — yes, the movie looks like it would have been a mess, but messes can still be really interesting to watch.
“The MIller JLA film didn’t happen for a sipmle reason. the script was awful.”
Lots of movies with awful scripts get made and become box-office hits. The Transformers movies, for instance.