JUSTICE LEAGUE DARK Maybe Not So Dead

Hollywood tracking board The Tracking Board reveals that Dark Universe aka Justice League Dark, once intended to be Guillermo del Toro's foray into the occult side of the DC Universe, isn't as dead as we all thought. Del Toro left the project and we kind of assumed that all momentum had left with him; after all, Guillermo had been working on various iterations of the story and some of the characters for a decade or more. I was there in New York City one night when Guillermo hung out with the late Arnold Drake, co-creator of Deadman, and picked his brain about the character for a movie. Drake died in 2007, to put how long ago this was into perspective. 

But Dark Universe has an afterlife, and The Tracking Board says that Scott Rudin has come aboard to produce the picture with a 2016 start being eyed. What the film will be is up in the air - will it still contain the characters GdT intended? Those were Constantine, Deadman, Zatanna, the Demon and Swamp Thing as the characters he would use. If you were making a movie set in the supernatural corners of the DC Movieverse they would be a good place to start, that's for sure. 

Dark Universe fits in with the way DC is introducing their characters to cinemagoers - in big, huge clumps. They have Aquaman, Batman and Wonder Woman debuting in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (and maybe The Flash as well, although the script I know only had him appear on security tape as a red streak) and they're bringing us a whole buttload of villains in Suicide Squad. It's the opposite of how Marvel is doing it, and it'll be interesting to see if it works. Suicide Squad is the film that has me hoping this system is a good one, that having a major ensemble coalesce out of nowhere can be exciting and cool. 

Could the occult heroes of Dark Universe ever team up with the Justice League? DC tends to keep the characters separate in the comics but I would kind of love to see Batman meet Swamp Thing on the big screen.