Aussie Filmmaker Planning Doco About 'Mad Max' Director's Failed 'Justice League' Film

Right now, the name George Miller is basically a licence to print money. Following the runaway success of franchise-revival flick Mad Max: Fury Road, the Australian-born director has become something of a figure of heightened interest in both his completed works and those that never came to be.

It's that latter category that has particularly caught our attention of late following the announcement from fellow Aussie filmmaker Ryan Unicomb that he plans to develop a documentary feature about Miller's kiboshed Justice League film, which was announced for DC Comics in 2007 and featured a cast including Armie Hammer (The Social Network) as Batman, DJ Cotrona (GI Joe: Retaliation) as Superman, Megan Gale as Wonder Woman and The OC's short-lived breakout Adam Brody as The Flash. 

If this all sounds like total gibberish to you, let us explain: back when the film was announced, it was well before any of us had visions of Ben Affleck donning the Bat-mantle or Henry Cavill sourpussing it up through the skies as Superman — let alone expecting to see them in the same film. Rather, while the world was still at the peak of being in thrall to Christopher Nolan's super-gritty Bat-verse, Miller was working on the doomed Justice League: Mortal, from which the planned documentary — Miller's Justice League: Mortal — takes its own moniker.

Unicomb announced the documentary project via Inside Film, to whom he explained that he and producers Aaron Cater and Steven Caldwell are yet to approach Miller or his producing partner, Doug Mitchell, to get clearance for the film — and, without it, it's likely dead in the water — but we've got our fingers crossed that Miller sees the artistic merits in delving into all the things that went wrong and what actually could have gone right with his abandoned super-team feature.

As The Hollywood Reporter explains, despite its best intentions, Miller's film got increasingly bogged down by budget problems and enduring the 2007-08 writers' strike before consequently being shelved altogether in 2009 as part of a wider symptom of DC's ongoing cinematic setbacks and failures.

It's a trajectory that echoes the development hell-dwelling of Tim Burton's canned Superman film, which also got its own documentary, The Death Of Superman Lives, and it promises to be utterly fascinating, especially when you consider that the cast also featured a diverse roster of players such as Common (who is now set for Suicide Squad, but was due to play Green Lantern^[1]), Santiago Cabrera (of Heroes fame; Aquaman), Teresa Palmer (Warm Bodies; Talia al-Ghul), Zoe Kazan (In Your Eyes; Iris West), Jay Baruchel (This Is The End; Maxwell Lord) and Fury Road/original Mad Max villain Hugh Keays-Byrne (Martian Manhunter).

That is a random assortment of people, people. Granted, it's arguably no more or less random than the ensemble that has taken shape as the new Justice League in the Zack Snyder-helmed DC film universe, but still. Regardless of its eclectic make-up, though - and in lieu of the planned doco having anything concrete to show us - at least we have a general idea of what the ensemble would have looked like, thanks to stunt worker Greg Van Borssum, who posted a photo of (most) of the gathered cast, with Miller, to Facebook last year.

Check out Van Borssum's pic below, and hope like hell that Unicomb & co. can pull this off.