Batman and Superman are no strangers to either facing off or teaming up in the pages of DC Comics, but it took a long time to get the iconic superheroes together on the big screen. Air Force One and Troy director Wolfgang Petersen came agonizingly close to having Batman V Superman made in the early 2000s, with Christian Bale and Josh Hartnett reportedly offered the title roles, but Warner Bros. eventually nixed the idea after realizing that they would make more money from two individual blockbusters rather than one crossover epic.
George Miller’s abandoned Justice League: Mortal almost had Armie Hammer and D.J. Cotrona suiting up as the Dark Knight and the Big Blue Boy Scout respectively before budget concerns saw that project dropped as well, leading many fans to think that they’d never see the comic book company’s two crown jewels co-starring in the same movie.
Once Zack Snyder came along and assumed control of the DCEU, though, a cinematic universe exploded out of nowhere, and after laying the groundwork in Man of Steel, we suddenly had Ben Affleck and Henry Cavill facing off in Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice. Fast forward almost five years, however, and we’re still waiting on the filmmaker to put the finishing touches on the follow-up.
According to tipster Mikey Sutton, though, the studio are so confident that it’ll be worth the wait that plans are already tentatively in place for an entire Justice League trilogy on HBO Max. Not only that, but the impending introduction of the multiverse in The Flash has reportedly given WB a vested interest in having Cavill’s Superman come face to face with Robert Pattinson’s rebooted Batman at some point. Quite how the various realities will tie together in order to make that happen remains unclear, but Sutton says that it’s something that the streaming platform wants to see.
