What Could Have Been / Justice League (2017)

• Bryan Cranston was initially offered the part of Commissioner Gordon before J. K. Simmons was cast. Cranston previously voiced the character in Batman: Year One.
• Laurence Fishburne was supposed to reprise his role as Perry White (likely for just a cameo, as he was supposed to have only one day of filming), but he couldn't fit a trip to London into his schedule to film it. He wound up jumping ship to Marvel Studios and playing Bill Foster in Ant-Man and the Wasp.
• The film was originally going to be a Movie Multipack, with the first movie being Justice League: Part I and the 2019 sequel being Justice League: Part II. Perhaps due to the increasing backlash against Movie Multipacks, the subtitles were dropped, and Zack Snyder assured fans that both movies would be complete, standalone films that happened to feature the same characters.
• Before Justice League became a movie as part of the DCEU, there were other attempts to bring the team to the screen:
  • There was a pitch for a Justice League movie given by George Miller. The movie, called Justice League: Mortal would not have been attached to any other continuity (though it would've featured an appearance by Michael Gough as Alfred Pennyworth, reprising his role from the Tim Burton/Joel Schumacher Batman film series). The film would have featured Armie Hammer as Batman, D.J. Cotrona as Superman, Megan Gale as Wonder Woman, Common as Green Lantern, Adam Brody as the Flash, Anton Yelchin as Kid Flash, Santiago Cabrera as Aquaman, Hugh Keays-Byrne as the Martian Manhunter, Teresa Palmer as Talia al Ghul, and Jay Baruchel as Maxwell Lord, the movie's Big Bad. The plot would have involved Maxwell Lord trying to use his army of OMACs to conquer the world. A major writer's strike from 2007-2008 (combined with the success of The Dark Knight) killed the project, which remained dormant until the DCEU gained momentum. To show that there's no hard feelings, Miller is a producer of this movie. (Megan Gale and Hugh Keays-Byrne would later appear in Miller's film Mad Max: Fury Road as the Valkyrie and Immortan Joe.)
  • Had Superman Lives (the potential Superman movie that would have infamously featured Nicolas Cage in the title role) not been canned, it would have led to a Tim Burton-directed Justice League.
• One wonders how the film would have turned out had Zack Snyder not left the post-production work (or had Executive Meddling not reworked the film, more exactly). Months after the movie came out, Snyder started posting behind-the-scenes photos on the social media Vero and sometimes answering questions about the originally intended version of the film. He stated he didn't see the theatrically released version and doesn't know about things like the Russian family, Barry Allen's obsession with "brunch", Lois being brought to calm Superman down after his resurrection, the 'crystal roots' summoned by the Unity and Lex Luthor's "league of our own" line. He also commented on the removal of Henry Cavill's mustache with CGI, stating "We all know that doesn't work". What's most notable is seeing how different a number of his scenes were to the intended final product, including scenes with clearly different locations than what was shown in the theatrical version, in addition to the numerous missing trailer scenes, deleted scenes and leaked VFX reels. It all went on to prove once and for all that the reshoots were extensive and did not stick to his original plans.
  • Ditto for Junkie XL, who was replaced by Danny Elfman for the soundtrack.
  • Much of the original teasing in Batman v. Superman was rendered an Aborted Arc due to the changes ultimately made to Justice League, and it's unclear how they would have played out had things gone according to plan. It is rumored that the original plan was indeed to stretch the plot out over two films (despite Word of God claims to the contrary), with Darkseid appearing as the villain of the second installment and Batman dying.
  • In an interview, Ciarán Hinds describes Steppenwolf's motivations as much more sympathetic than they ended up being in the finished product. Instead of an exile who wanted to conquer Earth so he could return home, Steppenwolf was Darkseid's slave, and he conquered other planets for Darkseid because it was the only way he could earn his own freedom.
  • On his podcast, Kevin Smith confirmed that the ending of the movie was originally supposed to feature Darkseid, who would've executed Steppenwolf for his failure. He then would've expressed a desire to go to Earth and meet "the Kryptonian," seemingly setting him up to be the villain of a hypothetical sequel. A piece of storyboard◊ added more weight to this.
  • Cinematographer Fabian Wagner confirmed that scenes featuring Superman's black suit were filmed, but ultimately ended up on the cutting room floor.
  • According to a VFX artist who worked on the film, one of the post-credit scenes was originally going to be a tease for the Green Lantern Corps film, with Kilowog and Tomar-Re arriving on Earth and meeting Bruce Wayne.
• Zack Snyder has said that Bruce was supposed to gift Barry with a new, more professional looking costume at the end of the film. However, the suit itself would not have been shown, as to allow the creative team of The Flash (2023) to reveal the new costume themselves.
• Concept arts showed that Aquaman was intended to have his iconic suit, and he ended up wearing a golden/green Atlantean battle suit in the film. The iconic suit was introduced in Aquaman instead. The reason behind this has probably something to do with the above, that is letting James Wan reveal the suit in his film.
• A planned scene about Batman investigating a Parademon nest in which cocooned humans are turned into Parademons was vetoed by studio executives for being "too scary". This likely would have resulted in Batman pushing forward to recruit other members of the Justice League. Instead, it was replaced by the scene Joss Whedon filmed with Holt McCallany.
• At a 2019 Q&A session, Zack Snyder revealed that his original vision was never filmed, as Chris Terrio's script was thrown out and completely rewritten from scratch after the negative reaction to Batman v Superman. The original script was significantly darker than the shooting script, and featured a dystopian future where most of Earth's heroes had been killed and Superman had turned evil after being exposed to the Anti-Life Equation. The events of the "Knightmare" sequence and Flash's cameo in BVS would've been explained, with the future Batman sending Flash back in time to warn the BVS-era Batman about Lois being the key to stopping Superman from going bad. In one of the screenplay's darkest moments, Darkseid would've murdered Lois after using a Boom Tube to enter the Batcave. The second film would have involved a time travel plot that would have Set Right What Once Went Wrong.
  • Adding to this, a museum set (detailed below) showed other plotlines that would've tied into this. The so-called "league of our own", the Injustice League, would've actually formed in the sequel, where they are in a Big Bad Duumvirate with Darkseid, and strike the heroes at critical moments while also helping bring Darkseid to Earth. Despite Lex Luthor's negative stance on Gods, he agreed to the partnership because they have a common enemy in Superman and Darkseid can let him control Earth as a necessary ruler. It would've then turned out that Aquaman's and Wonder Woman's deaths, as seen in Cyborg's vision, were actually caused respectively by Black Manta and Doctor Poison (on the other hand, an attack by Captain Cold fails to kill Flash and Cyborg), and Darkseid was only able to get Superman under the control of the Anti-Life Equation at all because once he said he needed Superman to submit instead of die, Lex told him about Lois. Once that happens, Darkseid orders Superman to kill Lex. An elderly Riddler, off his appearance in The Batman (2022) (when it was still set in the DC Extended Universe) would've solved the equation (and had been Driven to Suicide as a result), and Ocean Master would've also have a part in the team.
  • Deadshot and Hal Jordan were originally part of Batman's resistance, as listed in those outlines, but were replaced by Deathstroke and Joker in Zack Snyder's Justice League.
• A storyboard sequence featuring the conversation between Lois and Martha showed that once Lois left the room, Martha was going to be revealed as Martian Manhunter in disguise, who would then morph into General Swanwick.