'Justice League' to answer 'The Avengers'

Comic book naïf that I am, I thought that The Avengers was the only time superheroes from separate comic universes joined together to fight evil. I was wrong. Turns out Batman, Wonder Woman, Superman, the Green Lantern, the Flash (and the lesser-known Martian Manhunter and Hawkgirl) have their own crime-fighting gang, dubbed the Justice League. The comic book was turned into an animated series that ran on the Cartoon Network in the early aughts. Now Warner Bros., the studio behind the The Dark Knight Rises, is working on a film treatment of the Justice League. Will Beall (upcoming The Gangster Squad) will write a script that will team together the DC Comics superheroes.

Just as Disney owns Marvel Studios, Warner Bros. owns DC Comics. Both studios have been aggressively working on giving the comic book heroes their own movies. Iron Man, Iron Man 2, and The Avengers have been Disney's biggest hits, while The Dark Knight was a huge success for Warner Bros. The latter studio has also had some bad misses--like Jonah Hex (which grossed just $10 million) or the lackluster Green Lantern (a "mere" $117 million).

This isn't the first time Warner Bros. has tried to put together a Justice League film. Back in 2008, a version that was already cast fell apart due to a lack of tax breaks and the WGA strike. A couple of years ago, ScreenRant catalogued the various stages of Warner Bros.' DC Comics projects. A lot of them still aren't off the ground. Besides Justice League, it seems that audiences will be most likely to see a version of Wonder Woman or The Flash in the near future. This summer holds both The Avengers and The Dark Knight Rises. Through 2014, Disney has Iron Man 3 and Thor 2 lined up, but Warner Bros. doesn't have any DC Comics productions--they're putting their muscle behind a little project known as The Hobbit. Given the long production cycle and extensive special effects that go into a superhero movie, along with Warner Bros. many other big-budget films, it may be a while before Batman joins forces with his DC Comics companions.