Bad Robot working on Justice League Dark for Warner Bros.

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

The Warner Bros./DC Comics project JUSTICE LEAGUE DARK has been in development hell for years. A film that would feature "DC's more horrific characters teaming up to fight a greater evil", it was first meant to be a Guillermo del Toro project, and del Toro even finished writing a draft of the script before he went off to do other things. Warner Bros. showed interest in having Fede Alvarez, Andy Muschietti, or the directing duo Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado take the helm of the film. Doug Liman was signed on to direct for a brief time, then dropped out like del Toro did. Joseph Kahn took his own pitch to WB and envisioned Dan Stevens playing John Constantine, with Natalie Dormer as Zatanna and Chiwetel Ejiofor as Jason Blood.

The last update we heard on this project was in mid-2017, at which time HOUSEBOUND writer/director Gerard Johnstone was polishing the script.

JUSTICE LEAGUE DARK was said to be about 

a dark Justice League team that consists of John Constantine, Swamp Thing, Deadman, Zatanna, and Etrigan the Demon.

Now it sounds like development is going to be starting over from scratch, as Deadline has heard that Warner Bros. is handing JUSTICE LEAGUE DARK over to J.J. Abrams' production company Bad Robot, which recently signed a deal with Warner Media. Bad Robot is said to be

developing both film and TV ideas based on DC’s Justice League Dark universe at Warner Bros.

This deal is all very nascent and at this point in time there aren’t any specific projects or characters that are being specifically developed out of the franchise. I understand that Bad Robot’s Head of Motion Pictures Hannah Minghella and Head of Television Ben Stephenson will soon be taking meetings with talent reps and their writing clients on which characters will get their own projects.

Minghella will be working on JUSTICE LEAGUE DARK feature ideas with Warner Bros. President of DC-based Film Production Walter Hamada, while Stephenson will be kicking around TV series ideas with the Warner Bros. Television Group, which includes President & Chief Content Officer Peter Roth, President Susan Rovner, and President Brett Paul.

It doesn't look like it has been decided whether or not Abrams will be directing any of the JLD projects Minghella or Stephenson come up with.

The problem with this is, I'm sure that del Toro script was probably pretty good, if not awesome. I would love to see what sort of material he wrote for these characters. Bad Robot usually likes to set aside anything that was written for a project before they got involved, so it looks like GDT's JLD ideas will never be brought to the screen in any way.