Shockingly, Warner's Interested In Justice League Again Since Avengers Made $1.7 Billion

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Hey, remember when Warner and DC Entertainment were developing a Justice League movie five years ago? Here’s a recap:

George Miller was going to direct Justice League, with Armie Hammer playing Batman, D.J. Cotrona donning the red cape for Superman, Adam Brody appearing as The Flash, Common cuckolding Ryan Reynolds as The Green Lantern, and Megan Gale being the first onscreen Wonder Woman. (Winklevoss made it sound like a pretty cool project.) Sadly, all that work and potential was swept away by the WGA Strike of 2007 and some problems with the tax system in Australia (its place of production). [FilmStage]

Now Variety reports Warner “quietly” resumed preparation of their Justice League movie while The Avengers was shooting last year. Since The Avengers has grossed almost $1.7 billion so far, Warner seems to have felt comfortable leaking the information to Variety to suss out public sentiment (allegedly).

Warner reportedly abandoned the Justice League script by Kieran and Michele Mulroney and hired Will Beall to pen a new script. He’s the same writer behind Gangster Squad, a Lethal Weapon remake, and a Logan’s Run remake, three movies which haven’t been released yet, so that’s reassuring. At least the Gangster Squad trailer looks good.

No word yet on whether Warner will include actors who have already played the characters (such as Henry Cavill as Superman or Ryan Reynolds as The Green Lantern) or how they’ll handle the Batman character so soon after Nolan’s version.

DC and Warner are also developing scripts for other projects we’ll believe when we see them, like hiring Green Lantern writers Marc Guggenheim and Michael Green to adapt The Flash for director Greg Berlanti, enlisting another Green Lantern writer (Michael Goldenberg) to adapt Wonder Woman, hiring Brad Peyton for a new draft of Lobo, and hiring John Kamps and David Koepp to adapt Spy vs. Spy for Ron Howard. I swear I didn’t make that last one up, even though it sounds like I found it with an “adaptations which will never happen” generator. Ron Howard will probably do with that project whatever he did with Richie Cunningham’s older brother on Happy Days.