Jay Baruchel Talks About What It Was Like Working on JUSTICE LEAGUE MORTAL with George Miller
As most of you already know, back in 2008 Warner Bros was developing a Justice League movie with director George Miller titled Justice League Mortal. I would have loved to see this movie get made, but unfortunately, the project was canceled while it was in development.
There was a lot of work that was completed before the film was shelved and during a recent interview with Variety, Jay Baruchel opened up about his time working on the film with George Miller. Apparently, the director had a big impact on Baruchel, who was set to play Maxwell Lord in the movie.
When asked to compare his version of Maxwell Lord with Pedro Pascal’s version of the character in Wonder Woman 1984, the actor shared:
I haven’t seen it. I know the character’s in it, so I can’t speak to what they did versus what we were going to do. I can speak to the crazy fucking fever dream that would have been “Justice League: Mortal” by George Miller. I just spent ten minutes talking shit about acting, but my time in Australia with him is everything I adore about the craft. He treated it like a play. We workshopped it. We had a full-on dramaturg on set and did super, super earnest Meisner technique shit and ripped apart and unpacked the script just for the sake of itself. It was art for art’s sake. George is one of the most important filmmakers of all time and part of the reason I wanted to be a director was “Road Warrior.” I have no idea what they did in the new one, but in ours we had psychokinesis and blood coming out of my tear ducts and a whole bunch of crazy, cool shit that would have been a blast to do. We were painting with pretty vivid operatic colors.
That right there is yet another reason why I would have loved to see Miller’s Justice League Mortal get made. I just can’t help but wonder how this movie would have turned out, especially with Miller at the helm.
The movie also would have starred Armie Hammer as Batman, D.J. Cotrona as Superman, Megan Gale as Wonder Woman, Adam Brody as Flash, Santiago Cabrera as Aquaman, Common as Green Lantern, Hugh Keays-Byrne as Martian Manhunter, Anton Yelchin as Wally West, and Teresa Palmer as Talia al Ghul.
For those of you who are curious about this film and the story it would have told, you can read a breakdown of the script here, or watch a live-read of it here.