The Future of the Justice League on the Big Screen: Batman and Superman are IN!

Last week I did manage to catch the beginning of all of this, as I mentioned. Warner Bros. want to go ahead with plans for a 2009 Justice League flick. However they wanted to wait on a rewrite of the script before they went ahead. I think we can all agree that – based on what we had heard – this was entirely necessary.

However while Variety was reporting that Warner Bros. was pushing ahead with filming in Sydney, Australia, the Sydney Morning Herald reported that while George Miller was underway with pre-production, it looked as if the movie was going to head to Canada.

The issue is that the Australian government doesn’t want to lend their tax rebate for Australian produced movies to a big budget like JL: Mortal. A commenter on my own blog suggested that this was because the rebate would eat up about a third of the overall tax rebate budget the Australian government has allotted for the program.

However, that being said, to lose this movie – no matter how it happened – would seriously and further cripple the Australian film industry. Once big with films like Star Wars and Finding Nemo, the Australian Film Industry has fallen in terms of international importance.

The most recent reports suggest that Canada will indeed win out as home of the JL movie though.

IESB.net has also been told that the rewrites being undertaken by Kieran and Michele Mulroney were focused heavily on the third act. In fact, according to reports, the story has been 100% reworked.

Lastly, and possibly most importantly, the rumors that were circulating regarding Superman and Batman being absent from the movie have also been laid to rest. In perfect Australian style (trust me, I’m one of them), IESB report that “total bullshit” was the exactly response regarding those claims.

So, whether any of this bodes well for a good JL movie or not is up to you. For me, I’m just going to try and wait and see.