Justice League Mortal would’ve had a brutal Superman/Wonder Woman brawl

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

Before this November’s JUSTICE LEAGUE, and even before 2012’s THE AVENGERS, there was JUSTICE LEAGUE MORTAL – or at least there was supposed to be. The movie was all set for a 2009 release with George Miller at the helm, but the whole thing came to a screeching halt. Now it lives in movie “what if” hell, and we only get snippets of what could’ve been from the cast and crew. One new snippet has just been revealed by one of the film’s stars, and now we have yet another reason to cry for this movie that once was.

While promoting GOON: LAST OF THE ENFORCERS, Jay Baruchel spoke with Happy Sad Confused about the superhero epic that was in full pre-production about 10 years ago. He was all set to play the villain, Maxwell Lord, and talked about a killer fight that was meant to happen between Superman (D.J. Cotrona) and Wonder Woman (Megan Gale):

There’s a scene where Maxwell Lord brainwashes Clark and all of a sudden this guy’s got Superman as a weapon. But the process for me to do it, and my pitch was and Miller loved, I start bleeding out of every fucking orifice because it takes that much effort to get me into a Kryptonian brain. And then I turn him into Red-Eye Superman, and there’s this big-ass fight between him and Wonder Woman where he breaks her fucking wrists and shit. And then I die halfway through the movie and my consciousness is uploaded to a fucking mainframe and I’m an evil computer.

He brought up how everything was ready to go: The costumes were done; pre-visuals were completed; they had all the production design worked out, etc.  But then the 2007-08 writers’ strike muddied the process, the first stumble that led to the movie shutting down production. Now DC has their whole new slate of movies, including WONDER WOMAN, which came out in June. The introduction of Diana Prince would’ve been much different than how we saw her in WOMAN, showcasing some truly barbaric combat skills:

The opening scene on Themiscyria, it’s her on top of a steed, and she stood about half a kilometer away from a minotaur, minotaur’s got a battle axe in its hand, and she just rushes him—all the Amazons are there cheering her on—she just beheads him, gets off her steed, and holds up its head, doesn’t say a goddamn thing, and I’m like, ‘That’s the Wonder Woman I want to see!’

A documentary is currently being filmed that will completely explain the reason for the movie’s cancellation and will elaborate on everything we already know.

Lord only knows how awesome (or horrible) JUSTICE LEAGUE MORTAL would’ve been, and if it was a success the current slate of DCEU movies would be practically non-existent – the names Henry Cavill (Superman) and Gal Gadot (Wonder Woman) would've remained relatively unknown. The documentary should be quite illuminating, and considering how deep they were into production I can imagine that by the end of it we will have a complete picture of how the movie would’ve ended up.  

JUSTICE LEAGUE with Cavill, Gadot, Ben Affleck, Ezra Miller, Jason Momoa and Ray Fisher arrives November 17.