World Building: Man of Steel, Joseph Gordon-Levitt May Be Involved In Justice League Movie

Update, 7 p.m.: According to Sydney Bucksbaum at Hollywood.com, Gordon-Levitt’s representatives have “refuted the rumor entirely.” Of course, one time I had representatives “refute” the “rumor” that I had “run over” an “elderly person” while I was “hammered.” At least they did until my representatives negotiated a final “plea agreement.” So for now, I guess this will remain, as it did this morning, a cool-sounding rumor.

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Ever since Marvel Studios’ Avengers movie made about a bazillion dollars earlier this year, it was all but a foregone conclusion that Warner Bros. would be coming out with a Justice League movie. You know, unless for some reason they hate money. Watching a movie about a superhero team make beaucoup delores, to the point it has only been beaten by blue people fucking or young lovers freezing to death in the frigid North Atlantic (again: blue people fucking. Pow! Thank you folks, I’ll be here all week! I work here!), and then leaving your own superhero property on the table, would be less a poor management decision than terminal self-destructive whiskey insanity.

The Justice League movie has quietly been in pre-production since Warner Bros. won the latest battle for the rights to Superman against the estate of Superman creator Joe Shuster about a month ago, but without a lot of detail as to how they were gonna proceed. Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy had ended, with both Nolan and Batman actor Christian Bale saying pretty strongly that they wouldn’t be involved in anything else Batman-related. Zack Snyder was deep into production on Superman movie Man of Steel, but he’d said back in March of last year that Man of Steel wouldn’t be part of any Justice League movie. So all initial indications were that Warner Bros. was planning pull a reverse of Marvel Studios, and just make a Justice League movie, spinning individual heroes’ movies off of that.

But that was then, and $623,279,547 Avengers movie dollars ago. Today, it looks like there might be some moves to make Justice League tie not only into Man of Steel… but into Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy.

A few days ago, Snyder did an extensive interview with The New York Post about Man of Steel, where he talked about things like the responsibility for such an iconic character, and his love and battle for Superman’s underpants (ew!)… and whether the movie might tie into Justice League:

“I don’t know how ‘Justice League’ is going to be handled. Honestly, I don’t,” Snyder says. “But ‘The Man of Steel’ exists, and Superman is in it. I don’t know how you’d move forward without acknowledging that.”

When asked whether he had conversations with the studio about integrating “Man of Steel” into a larger superhero universe, Snyder treads carefully.

“Um, how can I answer that?” he wonders. “I can’t really say anything to that, because that’s a big spoiler. I will say, yeah, they trust me to keep them on course.”

This tells us two things: that there is very likely going to be a Justice League teaser (at least) in Man of Steel, and that a wise man would immediately start hunting up a poker game with Zack, because he is the worst liar in the world.

So that (potentially) ties up Superman, but what about Batman? It seemed like a long-shot to tie Nolan’s films in, what with Nolan and, well, the guy who fucking played Batman, saying that they weren’t going to be involved. However, you’ve seen The Dark Knight Rises, and you remember the ending so you know where this is going… and since I don’t want to be the one who spits out a rumor with no particular attribution, I’ll just directly quote Drew McWeeny from HitFix:

According to sources, Joseph Gordon-Levitt absolutely will be appearing in “Justice League” as the new Batman.

Who are McWeeny’s sources for this casting information? Fucked if I know; for all I know, he’s citing the same source I use when I tell women that I have a ten-inch wang and that I have been cast as Snapper Carr in Justice League: his ass. And let’s keep in mind that, for all of McWeeny’s confident assertions in that quote, the article’s headline ends with a question mark: the universal journalistic semaphore for “Please don’t sue us! Or call us bullshit artists if this fact goes sideways!” With that said, McWeeny has been doing online film journalism since the early days of Ain’t It Cool News, which means that he probably has better sources than mine… mine being restricted to calling my local theater to ask for showtimes. And someday they’ll stop responding with, “No comment, shitbag.”

Still and all, these rumors have convinced me of one thing: when you go see Man of Steel, it might be a good idea to stick around until the very end of the credits.

(via The New York Post and HitFix)