This past summer’s Man of Steel marked a big step forward for Warner Bros. with regards to its DC Comics properties.  Following Marvel’s massive success with interconnected superhero movies, WB has been trying to find a way to take a similar approach to its DC characters.  Green Lantern was a swing and a miss, and Christopher Nolan made it very clear that his Dark Knight Trilogy was a standalone set of films not set within a larger universe.  But with Man of Steel, WB finally has a hit with a rebooted DC character, and the studio is moving forward with a follow-up that brings Batman into the fold.

Obviously the endgame is a Justice League movie, but WB has been toying with that idea for years.  Director George Miller came extremely close to getting his iteration of Justice League in front of cameras in 2007, but the plug was prematurely pulled.  However, a leaked version of the script for Miller’s film has now landed online.  Hit the jump for much more.

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Image via Warner Bros.

Back in 2007, George Miller was preparing to begin production on a Justice League film in Australia with a young cast that included Armie Hammer (The Lone Ranger) as Batman, D.J. Cotrona (G.I. Joe: Retaliation) as Superman, Common as Green Lantern, and Adam Brody (The O.C.) as The Flash (watch Hammer excitedly talk about the project here).  Sets were built, costumes had been created, but just as filming was gearing up to begin, Warner Bros. put the project on hold.  Obviously the film never did come to fruition, but Miller’s Justice League is one of the great “What If?’s” in movie history.

Now Superhero Movie News (via The Playlist) claims to have gotten a hold of the script, which can now be read in its entirety.  I haven’t had time to read the script, but here’s The Playlist’s rundown:

The script focuses on the seven superheroes' relationship to an all-powerful satellite system that Batman rigged to spy on them, and jumps off from that into some social commentary mixed with your usual high-stakes action setpieces. It also poses an curious bizarro universe of the present superhero flick landscape—one in which Miller attempted the gargantuan task of a much-rushed, ensemble superhero experiment, and very likely could have temporarily killed adaptations in the same way that Batman and Robin did in 1997.

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Image via DC Comics

Not a great comparison, but I’m still interested to see what Miller had planned nonetheless—assuming this is indeed the version of the script that Miller intended to shoot.  Warner Bros. still plans on making a Justice League movie at some point, but right now the studio’s focus is on Zack Snyder’s Batman vs. Superman, which could very well lead to another Batman reboot sooner rather than later and very likely lays the foundation for a Justice League movie.

Speaking in a keynote address at USC recently (via THR), Warner Bros. CEO Kevin Tsujihara reiterated the studio’s intent to get the Wonder Woman property off the ground, saying “We need to get Wonder Woman on the big screen or TV.”  With female-led films doing big business at the box office, studios are finally started to come around to the idea that women can lead blockbuster franchises too.  Chronicle scribe Max Landis has stated his intent to pitch a Wonder Woman movie to WB, but there are no doubt countless others who “intend” to pitch a comic book take to the studio—don’t go thinking Landis will be the one to bring Wonder Woman to the screen just yet.

For now, we wait.  Since Batman vs. Superman is melding DC’s two most popular characters, that film will likely be a bellwether of what’s to come with regards to WB’s future superhero movie slate.  As such, I expect we’ll have a much better idea of what the next few DC movies look like after we start to learn more about Snyder’s film.

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Image via Alex Ross