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Before Mad Max: Fury Road, before The Dark Knight, director George Miller had very nearly put together a complete cast for a Justice League film for release in 2009. And while it never saw the light of day, documentary filmmakers Ryan Unicomb, Aaron Carter and Steve Caldwell have announced plans to give the failed production the documentary treatment.
Despite the enduring legacy of Mad Max and its sequels, it's been a long time since George Miller directed an action film. It's not surprising that in the wake of Fury Road's success, there would be renewed interest in the story of a highly anticipated superhero adaptation that never made it to screens. At the point at which it was abandoned, Miller's Justice League had already gathered an extensive cast, including Common as the Green Lantern Jon Stewart, Santiago Cabrera as Aquaman, Teresa Palmer as Talia al Ghul, Zoe Kazan and Adrian Brody as Iris and Barry Allen and Fury Road's Hugh Keays-Byrne (Immortan Joe) as the Martian Manhunter. The DC Trinity would have been rounded out by Armie Hammer as Batman, D.J. Cotrona as Superman and Fury Road's Megan Gale (The Valkyrie) as Wonder Woman.
Things got far enough along that a stunt man was able to take this photo at a pre-production cast get-together in 2007:
Posted by Greg Van Borssum on Friday, March 21, 2014
Work on the film was delayed by the Writers' Strike of the late '00s, and eventually halted after the immense success of The Dark Knight, left Warner Bros. nervous about managing two cinematic versions of Batman, and therefore the DC universe, at the same time.
Unicomb and his team don't have a timeline for which their documentary will be completed at the moment, saying "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?" Though the production has investors interested, it may also turn to crowdfunding. Whatever happens, let's hope it doesn't go the way of the film it's based on.
(What else would be more appropriate to use as an image for about the connection between Mad Max: Fury Road and the Justice League but a picture of Infinite Crisis' post-nuclear apocalypse-inspired Wonder Woman?)
