Academy Award nominated director Jason Reitman claims that he turned down the opportunity to direct the Justice League of America movie last Summer.
This isn’t as far fetched as it sounds. He fits the criteria of director that Warner Bros. sought after originally… someone young and ambitious who has proven himself with a strong character driven film.
You may remember David Slade was hired for two weeks before George Miller came on board.
So why did Reitman turn the film down? Well he didn’t think he could make a movie that would live up to the audiences expectation and for now he’s quite happy to say in the Indie film genre. This is what he said to Howard Stern when asked “How’s the script”…
“Good, FINE… You know, I mean. I had to sign something, they send me the script and it comes on this spy paper which cant be xeroxed,” revealed Jason Reitman. “They have a time when I have to have the script back to them and the script is fine and I could be spending…” Jason later continued: “What am I going to do with Justice League of America? So Basically I’ll make a movie that is not as good as X-Men, then I’ll be the guy who made a movie not as good as X-Men. Where just like you talking about, going to smaller stations, if I make another small movie, and it’s really good, it performs well…” “Right now I’m thought of as a particular type of director. I’ve got an oscar nomination. I’ve made two indie films that play film festivals that are considered thoughtful. I want to stay in that world, I like making those type of films.”
He also revealed the budget would be $150 million, a number which we believe has gained another $50 million at least at this point.
He may be telling the truth and fair play to him and everything but reading between the lines (I haven’t heard the audio from the interview so I can’t be sure) it sounds like he didn’t think much of the script did he?
So instead of JLA, Reitman’s next movie will be Pierre Pierre – an adaptation of one of last year’s black listed unproduced scripts with Jim Carrey in the lead role. It’s a black comedy about a self-indulgent French nihilist who transports a stolen painting from Paris to London.
Reitman is a smart guy who cares about the filmography he is putting together. He will only make movies from the best scripts. It would have been real interesting if a really good JLA script fell into his hands, then would he have turned them down?
source – /film
10 Comments
Good for Him!!
I think WB also went after him since he would come cheap.
I think this isn’t his type of film. And I’m pretty sure the first X-Men film could’ve been better than it was.
Thank God.
Yeah, depends which X-Men he was talking about – I’ve never though much of the first one, but the second is a classic.Anyway, maybe Reitman just didn’t was to get involved in a movie that would inevitably be extremely effects / art design heavy. Even the best superhero movies involve a huge amount of work on the looks and action and if you get a director whose heart isn’t in that direction as much as the character stories you get things like Fantastic Four. Better to leave it to a director who can do the action as well as he can do the characters, though that’s a much smaller list.
You need an action director for this kind of movie. Clever dialogue will only take you so far, this is a movie about a team of superheroes, they big action set pieces.
The Justice League script was also on last years Black List with Pierre Pierre. There was plenty of raves for it from the DC and WB people and Patrick Sauriol. However, since then, Miller seems to have done a major, from the ground up, overhaul of the script. So, we have no idea what kind of shape it’s in now. Of course, it’s all relative. A “good” script in a superhero film will have lots of “Insert Action Scene Here” and “Insert FX Scene Here”. How good was the script for “300″? I’d expect a good JLA script to read a lot like that. <p>All the rumors leaking about Miller frighten me. From his strange cast, to his script overhaul, to his determination to fight for the rebate in Australia instead of moving. All of Miller’s choices seem highly out of whack. This is a disappointment to me, because I was so happy when Miller was first announced. I thought it was a genius pairing. Now I’m left bewildered.
Well based on his statements, it seems that he was focusing on films that would warrant an Oscar nomination.
As for Miller, I’m pretty sure he was brought on to help with this rebate mess. He said he was given complete creative control. Probably to help make the film Australian enough. It’s pretty obvious WB’s focus was to save money after they lost so much due to SR. I heard they may have lost a financial backer and the budget is back to $150 million. I think this film is dead because of all this money stuff.
@Hellen: 300’s not really a great comparison – Zack Snyder basically used the graphic novel as a storyboard for that movie. I’d say that with JLA, as with most of these movies, it’s best to avoid hearing specific news until close to its release. I know I find that rumours only spoil things for me – Spiderman 2 looked like a mess to me based on gossip, and look how that turned out! Best to wait till there’s a trailer and some reviews before making up your mind.
I dont know why all you dudes are waxing lyrical about this film, Warner will be pissing in the wind over this film from now until doomsday, This movie will never happen! forget it.
Here’s the audio…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzIlYj4gDhc