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Warner Bros May Scrap 'Justice League' Script & Look for New Writer?

by Ethan Anderton
February 7, 2013
Source: Badass Digest

For anyone who was worried that Warner Bros. eyes might have gotten to big for their money hungry stomach with Justice League, your fears seem to have been confirmed. With the pressure of a 2015 release date on the table, it sounds like the studio is having a lot of trouble figuring out how to get the DC Comics superhero ensemble off the ground. Badass Digest has heard form multiple sources that Will Beall's script for Justice League is being scrapped, and it's not clear how the studio will move forward. This comes after rumors of the hero line-up and the cosmic villain Darkseid gave us a vague idea of what to expect.

Considering we recently heard that Warner Bros. was waiting to see how Man of Steel played out before deciding to make a move on Justice League, this isn't all that surprising. After all, The Avengers might not have happened if Iron Man was a disaster. However, the fact that the studio wasn't excited enough about the project to get started even before Man of Steel hits theaters shows a complete lack of confidence.

So what are the issues? Well, the script has been called "half-baked" with studio input on the cutting and adding of various heroes creating some problems. Word on the street is the studio is going to commission a new script, and likely a completely different writer will tackle the property. We're not sure if this is going to make the proposed 2015 release, but this news is worrisome and makes it very unlikely. Your thoughts?

Filed under Development, Movie News, Rumors

From around the web:

http://www.facebook.com/people/Brad-White/1458067169 Brad White

Typical...
Thanos

Perhaps let a real comic writer who understands the characters write the script.....
- JP
  
  Total blasphemy! They don't understand movies. They just write up little panels to follow action and story arcs, kinda like a.... storyboard.... waaaiiiit a second....
http://www.facebook.com/chris.groves.507 Chris Groves

I said from the start they were going about it all wrong. Make the solo films, focus on quality and making them commercial, THEN make sure the crossover film is good. No, right on the heels of the Nolan trilogy ending, they want to do an ensemble film with Man of Steel as the only official lead in, and then spin-off individual films from it. It's counter-intuitive. It's not a crossover film if it comes first, it's just an ensemble. Also, trying to lock in a 2015 release date was short-sighted. 'Focus on making a movie, not a release date'...they were ignoring that. And now because they tried rushing it in order to compete with The Avengers sequel in 2015, they are going to have to start from scratch. You know what they SHOULD have done? Instead of prepping a Justice League film if Man of Steel was a hit, prep a Man of Steel sequel if it's a hit, prep a Flash movie, prep a Green Lantern reboot/sequel, prep a new Batman movie, prep a Wonder Woman movie...focus on making them GOOD, or at least GOOD ENOUGH to be commercial success. They don't each need to be some big $200 million production released in the heart of summer...they can be smaller scale fringe films that introduce them to modern audiences and succeed on their own level. THEN after you've established them, put the Justice League film together. Yeah, the payoff won't come for a good 5-6 years...but you need to invest to see returns. If you want Justice League to be on par with The Avengers, you can't make it before all of the other films. The 'event status' isn't there if there aren't at least a few films building up to it.
- David Darida
  
  There is a way of doing JL straight away, with a good script though. Not every team-up movie needs to do it the "Marvel way". There are two groups of people, the one wants the Marvel way, the other one thinks JL characters are so strong they don't need solo movies, which is partly right. JL characters are much more popular than Marvel characters. Marvel's greatest character is probably Spiderman, the irony is that Sony has the rights. WB/DC has the wild card though, Batman is thanks to Nolan such a popular character and every one knows/likes him and if Man of Steel delivers, you only need those two for most of the JL movie. IMO no need for solo movies. I may be wrong though, I also want the best JL movie we can get. And whether it's Marvel way, or JL straight away, let's hope we gonna get a movie everyone needs, deserves
  - http://www.facebook.com/chris.groves.507 Chris Groves
    
    "So strong they don't need solo movies"? If they were strong ENOUGH they would warrant their own solo films, and wouldn't have to get the 'rub' of the big team movie to then justify spin-offs. Going straight to the team up movie just screams 'short-sighted' in the eyes of many people.
    - David Darida
      
      Alright, in other words, if they announced: "We've just made a Justice League movie, we can't show you any trailer, nothing, but it's spectacular, it's in cinemas right now" how many would go see it? Well I guess it would be a great number...everyone knows Superman, everyone knows Batman...what else do you need, they don't even need marketing. The quality of that movie is another thing, I can't guarantee that...
Bl00dwerK

Justice League is doomed...
- capitandelespacio
  
  Pun intended?
http://twitter.com/Eric_Devlin Eric Devlin

well at least they caught it before Man of Steel. Disappointed but not surprised at this point.
Isildur_of_Numenor

"your fears seem to have been confirmed"? I'm sorry, but I totally disagree. If anything this is comforting. They know the script didn't work so they'll try again and do it right. Maybe this will mean that the movie will be delayed from the 2015 release date and that gives them more time to do it justice. Re-writes are very common and most of the times we don't even know they're happening. Just because it's Justice League, a big profile movie, everyone has their microscope on it. Let it breathe and give it a chance.
- si1ver
  
  "For anyone who was worried that Warner Bros. eyes might have gotten to big for their money hungry stomach with Justice League, your fears seem to have been confirmed." I think he meant we all feared this was too ambitious a project and now those fears have been confirmed.
  - Isildur_of_Numenor
    
    I fear that they'll rush it for the money, but this is not a confirmation for me. Actually it gives me hope. They could've just went with what they had but they realized it's bad and they're giving it another shot. That's how I see it. I have nothing against Ethan, he's a great guy, I just disagree that this is a confirmation. This doesn't prove anything.
    - JBrotsis
      
      It just proves that WB will probably not meet the scheduled release date. I agree with you that this is good news, they should give it time and write up a successful story and then pitch it into theaters, but I think the overall point Ethan is making was that WB has been doing everything in their power to just get the movie done in time to tee off with The Avengers sequel in 2015 and that is obviously not going to happen anymore....at least a worthy, done right JL movie won't be ready by that date.
      - Isildur_of_Numenor
        
        Agreed.
Bad Fred

Warner Bros is just choking right now looking at the success of Marvel. I wouldn't be suprised if they used the script anyway just to get it out in time. It's going to be Green Lantern all over again I know that for sure. I just hope Man of Steel does poorly at the box office so DC wouldn't have to suffer through another failed project.
- JBrotsis
  
  If Man of Steel flops, as well as JL, Warner bros should just give up entirely on DC adaptions and "sell" that industry to another production studio. It'll mark the ultimate failure in successfully executing DC movies. I'm a Marvel's guy, but I'm starting to feel sorry for the DC heros/villains (if they were actually alive) and how poorly their studio turns them into cinematic features.
Kyle Robinson

FYI, WB should look at who wrote Green Lantern for them including the rewrite artists and NOT USE THEM EVER AGAIN! And for crissakes stop using the same Visual Effects, Previs companies, and Supervisors on these films. They're killing your franchises!
Thexn

The reason Marvel's movies did well is because the people at the top were fans of the material and wanted to make the movies the fans would appreciate. They never forgot which fans got them to a point where they could afford to make their own movies. WB needs to make this movie for the JLA fans that got them to this point. Don't just make a movie because it has comic book characters, make it about the characters that happen to be in comic books.
JBrotsis

I'm just getting tired of all this crap DC and Marvel has with competing with one another. I'll say straight up I'm a die hard Marvels fan, but at the same time, I'm also a big fan of comics in general. So I've always hoped DC movies will be successful...to finally have comic book characters hit theaters in this day and age is purely exciting (with all the CGI and effects we have now). So I say to WB, stop trying to push for a movie to hit the same summer as The Avengers. It's only obvious no one has done a cinematic Justice League movie ever (that I'm aware of) or at least not in the past 30 years, so already we all know it's going to be good. So plan for it. If all you (WB) want is to make this movie for the money, to shatter records, to point and laugh at Marvel at how much better your JL was compared to Avengers then: 1. Good luck, haha but importantly 2. go in depth with studying the characters, their strengths and weaknesses, the villains strengths and weaknesses, and develop a solid plot and storyline. Do it with as much time as you need. GET IT DONE RIGHT, the first time. Then when you release it and it does beat Marvel, you'll know you've done your job right (slow and steady wins the race). Because if you release it during the same summer, its not gonna matter because, as usual, you're gonna have Marvel vs DC fans fighting over which movie is going to be better (as we saw with Avengers and TDKR) resulting is potential movie goers probably not seeing it and backlashing the inferior movie. The Avengers will always be more important to me, but I greatly want to see an impressive DC Justice League movie.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Justin-Mullen/10727616 Justin Mullen

The major problem I see with any Justice League story is that any one of the individual heroes is already way overpowered, putting them all together just makes it silly. In order to create a viable conflict you have to go to world ending invasion scenarios and The Avengers just did that.
Guest

Just give it to Grant Morrison or Paul Dini, someone like that.
Numeta

They should honestly just go with Sinestro come back as a villain who recruits all of earth's bad guys to crush earth with his ring's "special finding powers" . Then Hal Jordan could "activate" his ring and be like "Find me all the good super heroes" then we're in travel with the green lantern ring as it travels us to each destination, Gotham . Illinois or Metropolis and so on.