Justice League

They were accepting all sorts of pitches: Darren Arronofsky was working on a Batman Year One, Wolfgang Peterson had a Worlds Finest in motion and Paul Dini supposedly wrote a Batman Beyond script. A lot of people supposed that Nolan was trying to adapt Year One with Batman Begins (along with picking up parts of Arronofsky's script) and while there are certain common elements that wasn't the specific direction he was going for.

I've heard that Aronofsky's Batman pitch apparently had Bruce Wayne rendered homeless after the murder of his parents and raised by Alfred, in this version an elderly black mechanic. Bruce was going to wear a halloween-style bat mask be more or less dangerously psychotic. I'm not sure if this was a serious bid on Aronofsky's part, or if he just came up with it out of pique because he was pissed that Frank Miller would never answer his repeated requests for a story conference.

I've also heard that Joss Whedon did a treatment, but beyond a scene where a teenaged Bruce Wayne beats up a gang of bullies who are picking on a girl, and thus realizes he has the power to effect the course of events, and that Whedon was quite proud of his work on it, I haven't heard anything about it.

I think in the lead-up to Avengers, Whedon did mention something about it. He didn't elaborate much on his plan but he said he felt really uncomfortable during the pitch session and that he could tell all the execs hated it. He compared the experience to being a fish in a bowl as a room full of children stare at you.

The great problem of course is that either way, chances are a JLA film would be perceived as a rip-off of the Avengers. Just guestimating but if the current rumors are true and it does go forward, there's even a good chance it'd hit theaters around the time Avengers 2 would (presumably) be out. That'd actually be an interesting match-up.

It doesn't help matters that the JLA is traditionally brought together by an alien invasion...

edited 13th Oct '12 1:08:46 AM by KnownUnknown

My own opinion is, they should stop fighting the inevitable. The audience may view JLA as a johnny come lately after Avengers, but if its a good movie, *they'll still go see it.* There is no benefit to trying to make it diametrically opposite to Avengers, and lots of potential for detriment.

So what does DC do if the movie bombs? Do you think they'll just abandon movies entirely?

Regarding Whedon's bid. The main plot was Batman having to use a incarcerated villain (Ala' Hannibal Lector) to help solve a crime.

The last two Batman films have grossed $2 Billion. They might give up for a while on JLA, but not supes and the caped crusader. They will probably just go world's finest and just use the two of them.

edited 13th Oct '12 8:23:43 AM by korpse_man

Pretty much that. If JLA bombs, expect nothing but Batman and Superman. If Man of Steel does tepid, expect little Superman, too.

That would suck. I'd love an Aquaman movie and a decent Green Lantern.

Superman Returns didn't exactly do poorly, either. It made a profit, it just didn't do as well as WB wanted. I think the same can be said for Green Lantern.

The first thing aside from an alien invasion that comes to mind as far as bringing the JLA together is concerned is having to fight a mind-controlled Superman; now that I think of it, though, that's a lot like what a lot of people thought the plot of the Avengers was going to be, that they'd come together to stop the Hulk. If that is the route they take, they're going to suffer from what Whedon described in his commentary during the fight between Thor and Iron Man, where, if it's mind control, everyone's sitting around waiting for the fight to be over and for the status quo to reassert itself instead of being invested in the conflict.

Another possibilty is to create a Legion of Doom, have a bunch of villains get together to take out the heroes they couldn't stop on their own, and the heroes have to band together to stop them. That has the advantage of bringing a bunch of potentially fun villains into the mix.

Neither was very good though. I think doing some quality reboots would be best. Although someone suggested doing an Incredible Hulk and making it ambiguous whether or not a new GL movie is a sequel to the first. I'd be open to that I guess.

That was more or less my idea. I'd simply use John Stewart or Kyle Rayner and mention there was at least one other human GL before them, and keep it vague as to whether or not the crap Green Lantern movie is considered canon. Heck wasn't Common supposed to play GL in the George Miller movie?

Though just looking at DC's current actions it seems like they'd really rather push Jordan so I dunno.

They could always use Simon as the GL for the new movie.

No, Superman Returns did not make a profit. Not unless WB lied to the public in other, much less probable ways. Even if you assume the actual production budget ( less the prior, abandoned efforts ) was only 200M, it still would have had to make another 10M to break even in theaters. And I don't really buy it being that low, nor do I think the marketing budget was small. *Maybe* it broke even on DVD, but breaking even in DVD is nothing to crow about unless it *really* sells like hotcakes.

Ya sure about all that? 'Cause, according to Box Office Mojo, Superman Returns had a worldwide gross of $391 million.

edited 13th Oct '12 10:26:29 PM by RavenWilder

Correct, ultimately it made its budget back (200 million) but the general rule of thumb for success of a big studio movie is doubling its budget domestically, Returns only equaled the budget in the states. Foreign totals and even dvd releases can have an affect if they are just extraordinary (ie the theater made 1.2 times the budget but dvd sales were top 5 of the year). Toy sales are a completely different issue.

The reason is usually because there is some overhead involved with the marketing and contracts with the theaters (x number of showings in y number of theaters) and so once all that is filtered out it takes a sizeable portion of the money. Thus just because the budget was met doesn't mean a profit was made. That's why all independent films need to do is basically equal the budget and it is considered a success.

Green Lantern still made over 100 million domestically, one exec said that is evidence of an audience for the character they just mishandled the property. I still maintain that the script and casting was all good there was just some really bad decisions made in the filming/editing and especially the marketing (that first trailer just about sunk the movie out of the gate).

I'd argue that they miscast for Hal Jordan... or they cast the Green Lantern correctly, but for Kyle Rayner rather than Hal. Anyway, the rest of the cast was fine, I agree.

Yeah, I agree that most of the rest of the cast was pretty well casted, and pretty well acted as well. And even Reynolds wasn't so bad. A main reason I'd want to see a sequel is to see that portrayal of Sinestro and that version of Carol go through their respective villainous roles.

edited 13th Oct '12 11:18:22 PM by KnownUnknown

I thought Reynolds did a fine job in the role, he brought a good deal of humor and humanity to Jordan instead of letting him stick with a privileged jerkass attitude. Although I understand some hesitation cause a friend of mine said he couldn't see him beyond Van Wilder.

Yes, Superman Returns grossed 391M. However, *WB doesn't get the entire gross.* The gross is how much money each ticket cost; the amount the studio gets is about half that, because the theaters *also* get paid.

( Its actually more complicated, because the split varies from movie to movie, and changes over time after release; however, 50/50 is a good approximation, with whatever gains in openning weekend percentage balanced by the smaller percentage take in foreign countries due to additional costs )

Returns also had the production costs of the previous failed Superman pitches attached to it, from what I understand. Remember, WB was far enough along in the process that they had multiple scripts, a director and actors lined-up, and even costume tests.

I don't understand the idea of only counting the domestic box office when determining whether a movie made a profit. It's not as if foreign money doesn't count or something. A lot of movies make well over half their money overseas now.

The logic seems to be that if it doesn't do well in it's primary target area (the country of origin), it might as well be a foreign film. Money is money but it's still not considered a good sign if let's say, the French and Japanese really love a movie despite the fact that it totally bombed in America. And as I said above it wasn't just the foreign market issue, but that they already had to pay for the production costs of the past Superman projects.

Que? 391 *is* the worldwide gross. What I'm not allowing you to say is that every single dollar paid to a movie theater goes to the studios. Because it doesn't, the theaters also get their cut, abused by the studios they may be.

Also, again, I *do* know that they wrapped a lot of budget from their prior efforts into the project. That's why I assumed, for arguments sake, that the actual budget was only 200M. Note that the list budget is *270M* dollars; I have never heard anyone claim the amount of carried-over costs were more than 70M, or even 70M. I use a 70M assumption because its a convenient, very generous figure that still leaves Superman Returns solidly in the whole. Its most likely the actual real costs were closer to 230M.

edited 14th Oct '12 6:49:12 PM by metaphysician