The movie superhero universe seems to be splitting as much as with the comics...

Jeff Robinov, President of the Warner Bros. motion picture group, has his sights set on DC Comics based movies for 2013 and beyond. And one of the movies he’s pushing for is a movie based on longtime title Justice League. Robinov wants to capitalize on Marvel’s upcoming Avengers movie for a DC team-up movie (the irony of which is that Marvel started doing hero team-up comics only after DC had such success with Justice League of America), and says that a script for Justice League is being written, as well as scripts for feature films for The Flash and Wonder Woman (which he claims won’t interfere with the upcoming live action television show, likening it to Superman Returns being released while Smallville was still on TV).

This announcement, of course, got everyone in the blogosphere in a tizzy because The Dark Knight Rises doesn’t come out until next summer, and Superman: Man of Steel isn’t to hit theatres until Christmastime of 2012. Now, however, it looks like Justice League will be its own animal, completely separate from Chris Nolan or Zack Snyder’s films (although no word yet on whether or not Green Lantern will tie in). According to Snyder:

"Like what Chris Nolan is doing and what I’m doing with 'Superman', what they’ll do with 'Justice League' will be it’s own thing with its own Batman and own Superman. We’ll be over here with our movie and they’ll kinda get to do it twice, which is kind of cool."

This wouldn’t be the first attempt at transposing the comic for live action. In 1997, CBS produced a TV movie, Justice League of America, which was supposed to work as a pilot for a series, but it wasn’t picked up, and never aired in the US (it has aired overseas, and for that, I think I speak for all of America when I say “I’m sorry”). The movie featured Green Lantern (named Guy Gardner, but the appearance was based on Hal Jordan, Kyle Rayner, as well as Gardner), The Flash, Ice, Fire, The Atom, and David Ogden Stiers all painted green as J’onn J’onzz, The Martian Manhunter (and seeing some of his performance on YouTube, be grateful this never made it to television). The script was loosely based on a JLA storyline from the late 80s, and the film has been panned by everyone that has viewed it.

The group has fared much better in animation. The Super Friends was loosely based on the comic series, and the group has made appearances in other animated programs. They finally got their due in 2001 when Cartoon Network debuted Justice League (renamed Justice League Unlimited in its third season), which featured a seven member group. In its third season, they added many other characters from the various incarnations of the league. And Smallville has even used a truncated version of the League, as well as featuring a few members of the Justice Society of America, the predecessors of the League. There have also been two animated movies released by Warner Premiere; Justice League: The New Frontier (based on the graphic novel by Darwyn Cooke, and Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths, which explored the different crisis stories that DC has produced.

One sad bit of news that has come out of all of this is Robinov’s claims that this will lead to yet another reboot for Batman. While Nolan’s more down-to-Earth Dark Knight might not work well when teamed up with super powered heroes, I fail to see why we need to completely reboot the character as a whole. However, since I don’t get to make these decisions, it’s out of my hands. I’m certain they’ve learned not to leave Bats in the hands of Tim Burton or Joel Schumacher, so it might not be as bad as one might imagine.

In any case, DC and Warner are finally getting off of their duffs and getting the ball rolling, and taking a few cues from Marvel Studios. Maybe this way, I can finally see a Martian Manhunter movie before I die.

SuperHeroHype

See also:

Could a Justice League movie succeed?

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