The big talk around the Internet yesterday (other than Michael Bay’s silly comments) was that Christian Bale was not going to be in the Warner Bros. superhero ensemble Justice League of America and that he had not been approached for the role. This meant that WB was going to be casting someone completely new in the Batman role and now we learn that the Superman role will also be completely recast (No Routh? No biggie.) as IESB and Moviehole expand even further on casting news for the flick and the possibility that it is going to be a CGI/photo-real motion capture effort such as Beowulf and The Polar Express.
First off is the news that IESB just received saying that Sony Imageworks is competing with Rhythm & Hues, ILM and possibly WETA (the latter being unconfirmed) to create an all-cgi “photo-real” motion capture movie out of the Justice League. This new bit of news/rumor is what the site believes is the reason for the quick casting as director George Miller could then cast actors for the parts and do any facial tweaking necessary to fulfill the role despite their original look (such as Ray Winstone’s abs in Beowulf).
This is on top of the latest news that Moviehole reported saying that a casting director for the movie will be onboard next week and it’s then that they’ll be going after the cast, which is expected to include Superman, Batman, the Flash, Aquaman, Wonder Woman and the Green Lantern.
To go along with this new report IESB says that early meetings have already taken place for certain key roles and to expect announcements very soon.
If this is indeed the case then I guess it will be sooner rather than later that we will hear of a JLA cast. However, as IESB points out, if this is going to be a CGI/photo-real mo-cap flick then I don’t think we should expect it until 2009 at the earliest, or even 2010 or 2011 if Warner wants to get out a third Batman stand-alone flick and Man of Steel prior to the Justice League release.