SDCC 2013: ‘Justice League: War’ is the First New 52 DC Universe Animated Original Movie

Justice League_Vol1_TPWe here at iFanboy love the DC Universe Animated Original Movies. At least those of us in the iFanboy Animated Braintrust do.

In a few weeks, the next film hit DVD and Blu-ray–Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox–and it’s an adaptation of the Flashpoint mini-series that, in the comic book world, lead to The New 52. In discussing this upcoming film on our last podcast we noted that there was very little information about the animated film to hit after Flashpoint, and we joked that it would be a funny meta twist to have the Flashpoint movie lead to all of the subsequent animated films being set in The New 52.

It looks like this might actually be what’s happening, at least for one film.

The next DC Universe Animated Original Movie is called Justice League: War and it’s an adaptation of the first arc of Geoff Johns and Jim Lee’s New 52 Justice League. This was announced today via a Tweet from a WB PR maven Gary Miereanu and in a follow-up Tweet he gave us the only other information we have so far, that Batman will be voiced by Irish actor Jason O’Mara.

More information as it comes in.

UPDATE!

Here’s the main cast list:

Alan Tudyk – Superman
Jason O’Mara – Batman
Michelle Monaghan – Wonder Woman
Shemar Moore – Cyborg
Justin Kirk – Green Lantern
Christopher Gorham – The Flash


Comments

  1. I always like a good dark side story so this could be good! I hope not all movies are new 52 now though, I still wanted to see killing joke done:(

    • Except that it wasn’t a good Darkseid story. It wasn’t much of a story at all. It was so slowly moving though, they probably won’t have to cut anything to make a 70 minute movie out of it.

    • lol @alexhoward beat me to it. Im a Geoff Johns fan, but this arc was disappointing. Darkseid was just a lame generic villain with a 90’s marvel redesign in this. JL has gotten better, and all the dcu animated movies have been enjoyable, I’m sure they’ll change a few things around here and there. One thing I’ve learned, when they adapt specific stories, they may leave some things out or change certain details, but never once have I thought they made it worse then the source material.

    • I am going to pile on here too and say that the first arc of Justice League was kind of a non-story. I’ll be interested to see how they adapt it to resolve that issue.

      It also seems like DC Animated is continuing the trend of having movie subtitles that give no indication of what the story is about unless you already know the source material. (See: Apocalypse, Doom, Unbound)

    • @ctrosejr they dont care if the general public (which is the audience they really want to sell to) knows what the story is about, they just want them to know that its Justice League or Batman or Superman. I don’t mind that, if they actually do a teen titans judas contract animated movie and call it justice league jr on the packaging I’ll be ok with it at this point,

  2. Nice. Lets hope they do a throne of Atlantis that would be awesome.

  3. Sweet!!!!!! REALLY excited for the Flashpoint one too.

  4. They have a fine track record for animated films.

    All have at least been good, many have been great, some were excellent.

    I’m trusting them to continue to put out a very nice product.

  5. I liked the first arc of JL and I loved Flashpoint, so happy day for me. 😀

  6. I’m trying to give JL another chance, so I’m rereading volumes 1 and 2. Neither one really sold me on this new JL though, it felt like they were trying to copy Marvel too much. And the stories are kind of dull. They might be great as movies, but as stories constant fight scenes and explosions just don’t cut it most of the time.

    I’m really looking forward to the Flashpoint movie, but I question why the animated universe needs to be New 52. I mean if your a fan you have to look at it all as the 52 Multiverse anyway right? There’s so many versions of everyone there’s no way it’s Earth One or Earth Prime, whatever the main one’s called. So why narrow it down? Heck the cartoons haven’t done it yet, and they would reach a bigger audience.

    • Same here on JL. And the decision to streamline the new films to match the New 52 boggles me as well. You’d think that it’s to appeal to a wider audience, but most of the people that buy these are hardcore comics fans already.

      Anyway, I hope that they use this to adapt some of the better Nu52 stories, like “Night of the Owls” or some of the Wonder Woman stuff.

    • @Nightwing97: “And the decision to streamline the new films to match the New 52 boggles me as well.”

      No one knows if that’s what they’re doing. We’ll find out soon enough what their future plans are.

      “…but most of the people that buy these are hardcore comics fans already. ”

      Judging by sales figures that doesn’t seem accurate. Unless 80-90% of everybody who reads comics are buying them. Which they are not.

    • I’m gonna guess these DVDs don’t sell that well, maybe just enough to justify making more but not enough to go out of established brands (Batman, Superman, WW and GL at one point). I’ve been waiting for a Flash movie since I saw the tv series, but I’ll likely be waiting longer still (I don’t count Flashpoint). I hope they bring back the little secondary movies, but I’m assuming that comes out of budget and it’s easier/cheaper to tease the next movie.

    • Actually you can see how they have all sold here:

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DC_Universe_Animated_Original_Movies#Sales_performance

      Several of the movies have broken 200K sold. Considering thats about the same amount of orders that Justice League #1 got. So unless every single person that bought the comic plans on buying the dvd, they do get a lot of traffic by other casual consumers.

    • Looks like I was right; the established brands (Batman, Superman, maybe WW) sell better than others. I noticed their profits have benn declining as their projects go on. Not surprising in the case of the last Superman movie, but pretty surprising that TDKR 1 & 2 didn’t sell more. To be honest I think the story quality has been declining as well in alot of cases. Hopefully that changes.

    • I find it interesting that the WW and GL movies weren’t followed up on more, supposedly from “disappointing” sales, and yet they seem to be very strong sellers…I also notice that sales are good when the source material is good and then is interpreted well..DKR would seem to have low sales, until you factor in that they milked it with two movies, and probably lost some people there…I mean, I loved it, I’m genuinely surprised it didn’t sell better, but…
      I’ve liked almost every movie, with some of them being really good. I can’t help but wonder how these new ones, coming from weaker source material, will do.

    • I don’t think the newer ones have been as good honestly. And the source material thing doesn’t really apply IMO. “All-Star Superman”, one of the best Superman stories of the last decade. Boring movie. I know some liked it, but I thought they cut out too much and changed the tone for some odd reason and kinda ruined it. “Superman vs the Elite”, another popular story (great story in the comics), I thought it stayed pretty true to it and somewhat improved it. “JL:Doom”, written by the late Dwayne Mcduffy trying to introduce the Legion of Doom to modern fans. None of those sold well, so I don’t think the source material is the problem. Flashpoint is a great story, so was “Superman:Brainic”, “The Dark Knight Returns” (Pretty well done, I’m also surprised it didn’t do well), and “All-Star Superman”. But I don’t think any of their movie adaptations sold well. So I think its the creative quality, IE the people behind the “camera” that are the problem, not what stories they are adapting.

  7. When I heard ‘Justice League: War’ I assumed it was going to retell the Trinity War. Wouldn’t JL: Origin be more appropriate, might help sell some books too.

  8. While the current state of the DCU gets its fair share of criticism and derison there are some diamonds in the rough that would make great animated movies. Some of them have already been mentioned (Batman: Court of Owls, Aquaman: Thrones of Atlantis, Wonder Woman: Blood & Guts.

    But also imagine Francis Manupaul’s inspired look for Flash: Fast Forward or Rouges Revolution. Nightwing’s book has also been especially strong and could hold its own as a solo title with a Batman family guest appearance.

    • WW: Blood and Guts would be an awesome movie, but not sure it would fly animated. I love the thought of the recent Flash arcs as movies (keep in mind they wouldnt even attempt to match the art). You could even mix them and show the Flash beat each one, they get powers, final showdown, the end. Could be really cool.

    • While not all of the animated movies have worked to replicate the style of the original works, several have rather successfuly. Including Frank Miller’s Dark Knight Returns, Mazzuccheli Batman Year One, Michael Turner on Apocolypse, etc.

      And while the name of the story arc has been Blood and Guts, you could still tone down the violence level and have a great story of Wonder Woman discovering her true heritage with the greek gods, the attack on amazon island and her protecting the last daughter of zeus.

    • You make some good points, if they did adapt Manapul’s arcs on Flash I hope the art at least resembles his style. I love the new WW run, but I worry if they make a movie out of the New 52 origins the “real” WW fans would riot. Then again that could be free marketing.

  9. I hope it is filled to the brim with awfulness like this:
    http://i.imgur.com/wtJZVh.jpg

    I haven’t laughed this hard while reading since.

  10. Now we know why Bruce Timm left. New 52 in the animation now? Sooooooo lame. I was hoping the animation would avoid that mess.

  11. Yeah, I have no interest in this at the moment. I’ll check out the trailer when it’s released.

    I’d watch the shit out of a Throne Of Atlantis adaptaion, though! Not only is it a good example of the new dynamic, but it would go a long way in helping Arthur’s reputation with the casual fans.

  12. I was really hoping they stay in the pre flashpoint universe for a while. There’s a WEALTH of great material they could still turn into movies. As much as it would be cool to see a Court of Owls movie there’s much better material they could use. ohh well

    • There’s no indication that they won’t continue to produce pre-relaunch features. I think the powers that be know better than to close the book on that material. They have a great streak going. They’re not gonna shoot themselves in the foot.

    • Well that’s a bit of a relief. There’s still hope for a Mark Hamill Killing Joke movie. Guess We’ll have to wait for any official word on what comes after this.

    • I read that Mark Hamill retired as the voice of Joker.

    • @Sitara119, he’s stated a few times he would do the role again if it was for a “Killing Joke” adaptation.

  13. Enjoy them while you can. Judging by the sales numbers DCAU may not be long for this world.

  14. My LCS owner and I were talking about the upcoming Flashpoint movie and he said he thought it was a strange choice. I said, “I wonder if they are going to use it to lead in to a new 52 series on animated movies.” I thought with the new 52 figures in Target and Wal-Mart, they might try switching over their animated universe as well, just t for the cross marketing.

    Who knew I might be onto something?

    My hope is, if they continue to go the new 52 in animated movies route, they go off the beaten path a bit. (Mainly because an OMAC cartoon or Frankenstein cartoon could be so cool!)

  15. Just downloaded and watched Flashpoint via iTunes…….holy crap!!! This is by far the best DC animated movie yet!! They changed the story in some areas, but all in all it was a very faithful adaptation of the comic book story. I have a feeling the Ifanboy brain trust is going to agree. Cant wait to hear the Special Edition Podcast. And make sure you stay around for a short end credit scene.