"JLA movie getting of the ground"
http://blastr.com/2012/06/that-justice-league-movie.php

"Hot scribe pushing 'Justice League' at Warner Bros."
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118055082


I get the feeling DC will, if they try and repeat Marvel's success with the Avengers they will surely screw this up.

Why not try a slow build, get their sea legs so to speak.

The Batman franchise is ready for a reboot after this current film, and Superman may or may not work, so why not try out a "World's Finest" film first?

Just start with Superman and Batman teaming up and then go from there, maybe the next Batman film series should be like Brave and the Bold, four or more films leading to a JLA film. Starting with B&B: The World's Finest.

A few solid Team-up movies with one or two of the others, all leading to a full JLA team up. You could really make the thing cost effective by overlapping some of the shooting schedules.

The characters who get the best responses then get solo films, and more screen time in the JLA films. The trick would be one big story that starts out as several great stand-alone team up stories, that all build up to a huge threat, like all the villains from the team-up films all banning together to form the Legion of Doom. And then you make the JLA film the big pay-off with tons of fight scenes and gratuitous moments. Even bigger than the Avengers.

The Avengers movie proved that audiences are desperate for groupthink entertainment, so it may happen. The test will be if Gangster Squad tanks.

They could just make mini promotional movies. One of the "hottest" trends in the new media environment is to create a trailer that sends nerglingers and media outlets into an orgasmic froth. Why not produce little two-minute films (using the same type of budget used to produce trailers) to introduce the characters, shot at the same time as the movie, and released once every week in the month or so before the movie premiere? This way you avoid a 40-minute "Getting to know ya" intro to the JLA movie, and bypass a five-year franchise rollout.

That may be the single funniest thing you've said on this whole subject. The studio execs are waiting on pins and needles for the box office from Gangster Squad before deciding on a JLA flick? Gangster Squad?

Mike

The supposedly "hot" writer who is currently attached to the JLA project wrote Gangster Squad, doofus.

Some might argue that the five year build up was largely responsible for the movie's success. The movie itself was fun, but obviously not the greatest movie ever made. Much of the anticipation was generated over time, an I would argue that the Avengers had the benefit of being not only a new movie but also a sequel to not just one but the sequel to four other movies, with each of these movies all containing previews.

Taking these elements out of the equation would certainly not help.

No argument about it.

If Green Lantern had've been Iron Man, DC could've built slowly. Instead, Green Lantern was...y'know...that piece of unwatchable, money-burning garbage.

If you're going to make a superhero team movie in the shadow of The Avengers, it's probably not a great idea to use the exact tactics it used. You don't want to position yourself as Pepsi next to its Coke...You want to make a movie that says to the audience, "Oh, did that Avengers movie ever come out? I didn't notice."

Better to risk the comparisons to Avengers than being a huge monetary failure. And besides, the way to inoculate a film against comparisons? Make a better film.

Without the long build-up you don't get the excitement. And unless you make the greatest film ever, you end up with a huge budget, huge expectations and average ticket sales, or John Carter II.

They don't have to take the same route. Like I said above I think they should start with a great Batman Superman movie first, that might be enough to beat the avengers anyway, if it's done on a similar level as the Chris Reeve Superman and the Nolan Batman.

The general public is probably just as familiar with if not more familiar with both supporting casts than they are the rest of the JLA anyway. So meeting of these two Heroes and their cats is possibly just as huge an undertaking if not more so than The Avengers anyway.

Yes, and everybody knows that studios simply abandon multi-million dollar projects rather than just replace a writer. Hollywood is notorious for how highly it values writers and would never dream of ever dropping one from a project. No, the project itself must entirely be abandoned rather than commit the vile sin of paying one writer to go away and getting someone else for the job.

Sweet mary, Allen, could you at least think for 5 seconds before you post?

Mike

That's what I'm saying, doofus.

No, Allen, that's what you said. Clearly a statement that you think whether or not Gangster Squad tanks will determine if there's a JLA movie. That's why I made fun of you.

Mike

I understand what you’re saying, I just don’t think there’s a huge advantage to doing a Superman/Batman movie when you can easily market JLA as a Superman/Batman movie. And then you can sell the forthcoming movies as JLA: Flash or JLA: Wonder Woman, giving them a head start instead of potentially handicapping JLA with a team made up of several years worth of Green Lantern-style fuck-ups.

(And I know you're asking, "How can you sell JLA spin-offs if JLA is a bomb?" I'm asking, "How can you sell JLA if every member comes from a bomb?")

I think Hollywood logic is funny. DARK KNIGHT does big numbers, and suddenly, that's the reason why Superman Returns failed was because superhero movies need to be dark. Then Watchmen failed, and the anti-dark superhero film Iron Man thrills America and puts the whole "dark" thing into question.

So Avengers does great, and now Warner wants to rush it's own Avengers-type film. It's not that movie goers suddenly like movies about superhero teams. They really liked Robert Downey Jr and Iron Man PLUS Avengers featured characters from other hit movies like Thor and Captain America.

A Batman/Superman movie would probably be a big hit, but there the movies run into the same difficulties with continuity comics have had, amplified to the nth degree by the amount of money and people involved. Just changing five seconds of dialogue would be a huge headache, right?

There's also the problem most superfans have of asking the question 'how could Batman survive in any enviroment that gives Superman the slighest trouble?' Why hasn't Superman zapped the Joker to the Phantom Zone with his superspeed before Batman even knows he's escaped Arkham? Comics makes it easy to ignore this (somewhat) but it would have to stand up to mass audience scrutiny *and* capture a movie atmosphere which has made the DC characters successful in movies (believing a man can fly, Burton's dark shadowy Gotham; even the lighthearted Adam West version had its distinct pop-art atmosphere)

And then there's the character continuity itself. I don't think audiences will be that accepting of switching out the actors themselves, not as much as people think. We'll find out with the new Spider-Man movie if the sfx can truly bury the actors involved, but it won't be as easy as switching John Romita for Gil Kane.

For awhile the Superman reboot attempts included a Superman/Batman style film along the lines of "Dark Knight" (the Miller book, not the last movie). Thinking about it, that could actually work. The new Batman movie will be set several years after "Dark Knight" (the last movie, not the Miller book.) Assuming it's a hit, they could return to Bale's Batman one last time to adapt "Dark Knight" (the Miller book, not...) with an aged Superman.

This would give a boost to rebooting the Superman film franchise, start aligning the characters for a JLA franchise, and not be saddled with a Superman who has to compete with Christopher Reeve. He'd have a one-off appearance, unless they wanted to thinking about "Dark Knight 2".

I don't think anyone would advocate a team made up of several years worth of Green Lantern-style fuck-ups. I certainly would prefer they start over with GL and get it right, BUT I think you could argue that one or two wouldn't hurt. The Hulk and the Incredible Hulk were close to being a GL level failures. Money wise. Captain America and Thor didn't do as bad but were not as successful as Iron Man.

I think Marvel had one big hit with Iron Man, largely due to Robert Downey, Jr. and the Avengers benefited from being a sort of Iron Man sequel, with added bonuses.

Batman right now is doing even bigger than Iron Man. So DC has that going for them.

Superman Returns did better than Captain America, but not quite Thor money. The spread is about the same. I'd argue they could do a revamp of GL just like Marvel did with the Hulk, y'know just a little tweaking and if the new Superman movie does well, how is it any different than the variety of successes what Marvel had to work with, if they can pull off a decent showing with a Wonder Woman or Flash, they'd be doing about the same...

>THE DARK KNIGHT - $1,001,921,825
Iron Man 2 - $623 million
Iron Man - $585 million
Thor - $449 million
>SUPERMAN RETURNS - $391
>BATMAN BEGINS - $373 million
Captain America - $368 million
Incredible Hulk - $263 million
Hulk - $245 million
>GREEN LANTERN - $220 million

Chris, I think you are asking the kind of questions that resulted in Ang Lee creating a hugely boring movie that tries to over explain a lot of stuff no one cares about. Or even stuff like organic webshooters, people don't care about the likelyhood that Peter Parker is a scientific genius as well as a superhero any more than the statistical likelyhood his arch enemy turns out to be his BFF's dad.

And I think when we see a big screen JLA movie, the general audience has limited point of reference and will be expecting the Superfriends. So the bar on suspension of disbelief is pretty low to start with.

I think what Hollywood needs to learn from The Avengers is that audiences are willing to suspending disbelief, for the sake of a genre, the movie. Just give us a simple reason. And it doesn't need to be perfect, scientific or completely reasonable, if you just make a fun movie.

But it's the nature of the superhero genre to provoke those kind of imaginative questions (since the genre is entirely imaginary). A seven year-old can point out obvious problems with Superman existing in Batman's world. It's why most people grow out of superheroes, or we used to anyway.

Sure, we can suspend disbelief and accept that Cap, Black Widow and Hawkeye are more-or-less on an equal level with Iron Man, Thor and the Hulk, and the movie helped us do that. [Although the Hulk slammed Natasha into a wall maybe ten feet away, and she not only got up, she kept running and fighting for the rest of the movie.]

The Marvel movies (the ones I've seen anyway) work by picking-and-choosing from the characters' histories, but the DC movies [ditto] work by creating and sustaining appropriate atmosphere for the character, Tim Burton's being the most overt example.

After Burton's movies and the last couple Bat-blockbusters, I don't think anyone will be expecting the Superfriends for any JLA movie.

I expect much like the avengers they will suspend enough disbelief to see Batman and Superman fighting side by side on the big screen. Like you said the same contradictions appear in the Avengers.

They may not be expecting Superfriends but they sure as hell won't be scrutinizing the science like a fanboy does either, (maybe for some jokes to be sure) but a two hour movie is a different level of commitment. A lot of stuff can slip by the audience. Audiences want to believe in this stuff.

I can't see a JLA movie working. Batman as he appears now in movies is far too bleak and dark to appear in a film with Superman or any other character. If Gotham is that bad, why doesn't Superman go there and sort it out one afternoon?

As others have said, the Avengers success was built on the previous movies, some of which were really good, some okay but none of them complete duffers. So far, we've had Green Lantern (apparently crap) from DC - it's hardly building a superhero franchise.

There's already one mediocre example of a Justice League movie, although only made-for-TV:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nz97bXR6H_0

Which goes to show that getting superheroes right onscreen is hard. Getting the atmosphere right, finding that balance between too mundane and too over-the-top, getting the audience to willingly suspend disbelief, all of that is incredibly difficult. It's been done wrong many times, and it's worked or even just mostly-worked only a few times.

Some fans of the Smallville tv show had high hopes for the proto-JLA that appeared in that series. But I agree that pulling off a JLA movie at this point seems like a longshot, especially trying to base it on the DC movies that have come out so far. Whoever can do it successfully will be hailed as a creative genius.