Out of all the comic book movies that have failed to see the light of day over the years, George Miller's Justice League Mortal remains the most talked-about.
The Mad Max: Fury Road and Furiosa director's take on DC Comics' iconic super-team came very close to shooting after assembling a cast that included D.J. Cotrona as Superman, Armie Hammer as Batman, and Megan Gale as Wonder Woman.
The project was well into pre-production when the plug was pulled due to the writers strike, and we've seen quite a bit of low-quality concept art and behind-the-scenes photos doing the rounds online over the years.
Now, Ryan Unicomb - who was heading-up the now scrapped documentary about Justice League Mortal - has shared what might be our clearest look yet at one of the actors in full costume.
Late Australian actor Hugh Keays-Byrne, who played Immortan Joe in Fury Road, was cast as J’onn J’onzz in the movie, and these shots reveal how he would have looked in full prosthetics as a somewhat monstrous take on the heroic Martian Manhunter.
Jay Baruchel, who was set to play the villainous Maxwell Lord, revealed just how close cameras came to rolling in a 2017 interview.
“They had all the costume design. They had all of the pre-vis. They had all of the sort of production design figured out, and so they would take us and walk us through this command center where they had everything. The aesthetic choices that they were making and the story and character choices they were making are so ballsy, and we won’t ever see it.”
The actor also described what sounds like it would have been a brutal fight between Wonder Woman and Superman, who was being mind-controlled by Lord.
“All of a sudden this guy’s got Superman as a weapon. I turn him into full red eye Superman, and then there’s this big ass fight between him and Wonder Woman, where he breaks her f*cking wrists and s*it."
“The first time you see Wonder Woman, the opening scene on Themyscira, it was just her. It’s her on top of a steed … and she stood about half a kilometer away from a Minotaur. The Minotaur has a battle-ax in his hand and she just rushes him. All the Amazons are there cheering her on, and she just beheads him. Gets off her steed … holds up the Minotaur thing and doesn’t say a goddamned thing. It’s like, ‘That’s the Wonder Woman I want to see!’ It would have been special.”