Guillermo Del Toro reveals plans for his abandoned Justice League Dark film. DC Comics has a wide array of supernatural-themed heroes and teams, including the Sentinels of Magic and the Trench Coat Brigade, but in 2011 during the New 52 launch, they got a significant push with a new team book, Justice League Dark. The initial team consisted of Zatanna, John Constantine, Deadman, Etrigan the Demon, Madame Xanadu, Shade the Changing Man, and eventually Swamp Thing.

In 2012, just a year after the team debuted in the comics, Guillermo Del Toro entered talks to direct a film adaptation of Justice League Dark. Del Toro remained attached to the project, which was under the title of Dark Universe before Universal took that as the name for their planned cinematic universe until 2015. Yet, the film still stayed in development at Warner Bros. Following his departure, Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity) signed on to direct in 2016 but left the project in 2017.

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In an interview with Josh Horowitz during the Happy Sad Confused Podcast via Comicbookmovie.com, Del Toro revealed some details about his plans to adapt Justice League Dark to the big screen. Del Toro reveals his team lineup would have had Zatanna, Deadman, Swamp Thing, John Constantine, and Kloarian the Witch Boy. He gave his affection for the DC Universe and how he was always more of a fan of those comics, including how he wanted to draw from Alan Moore’s depiction of Constantine. Del Toro said:

“I took a little bit of the opening of the Alan Moore Constantine. And I took the dynamics between [Abby Arcane] and Swamp Thing, and I took the sort of revelatory moments when Deadman gets into a body, how he would experience the consciousness of that being. And one of my all time’s favourites is the demon Etrigan. I love that character. Zatanna is really, for me, another character that is really effortlessly powerful and interesting. Trying to mix that with Klarion the Witch Boy…I was [always] a DC guy.”

Since Del Toro’s departure, the Justice League Dark project at Warner Bros. has undergone more developmental changes. In January 2020, J.J Abrams and Bad Robot teamed with Warner Bros. to develop film and television projects based on Justice League Dark characters. Since then, multiple projects have been greenlit, including a Zatanna movie from Promising Young Woman screenwriter Emerald Fennell and a Constantine and Madame Xanadu series in development at HBO Max.

Justice League Dark, alongside the original plans for the Hobbit films, Hellboy 3, and The Haunted Mansion as Del Toro projects fans will always wonder what could have been. Del Toro’s previous entries into the superhero genre like Blade 2 and the Hellboy films, alongside his affection for the supernatural and monsters, made him the ideal candidate for the project. Yet since departing from developing Justice League Dark as a film, the director has moved onto a wide array of smaller personal films like the Academy Award-winning The Shape Water, the recently released Nightmare Alley, and the upcoming Netflix film Pinocchio that showcases the director’s visionary eye to non-franchise material.

Source: Comicbookmovie.com

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Richard Fink is a news writer for Screen Rant. He graduated from Arizona State University in 2016 with a degree in Film and Media Production. He loves the finer things in life, like cold Diet Coke on a hot summer day. Richard is a fan of all things Star Wars, Marvel, DC, and Film History.

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