The one DC movie I was truly interested in checking out was Warner Brother’s ‘Lobo‘ and now director Brad Peyton (‘San Andreas’,’Journey 2: The Mysterious Island’) has opened up as to why the project never saw the light of day.
We first heard about the project back in 2012 when Peyton was tapped to both write and direct the film with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson (‘G.I. Joe: Retaliation,’ ‘Hercules’) in talks to take on the role prior to becoming Black Adam in ‘Shazam.’ In 2013, however, Johnson said “For a minute I was interested in it (Lobo), then it went away.”
So what was the reason that the Last Czarnian didn’t get to bring us intergalactic bounty hunting to the big screen? Apparently it boiled down to a lack of name brand recognition.
According to Peyton:
“It’s one of those things where, creatively, you and I get it, but there’s a lot of people that don’t quite get that. It’s a real uphill battle to talk people into spending a lot of money to do things correctly… I was really happy with the script, [though]. I talked with Dwayne about it. Joel Silver and I had a really amazing meeting about it. I did a rewrite of the script and was really, really excited for it. In their estimation, though, he wasn’t one of those main guys… That’s fair enough.”
I mean, we all know how horrible it worked out for Marvel when they went with a bunch of nobodies and made their own film about intergalactic outlaws with ‘Guardians of the Galaxy,” right? To be fair, DC’s Cinematic Universe is much younger than Marvel’s with only one film out and while they have an impressive line up in the works, they still haven’t proven that their vision is going to be delivering blockbuster after blockbuster quite yet. Seems that Peyton agrees:
“I think that, to do any kind of comic book universe correctly, you do need to establish, ‘Here’s the tone. Here’s the main people.’ Then we can grow offshoots from there. With Marvel, they’re now doing smaller characters like ‘Ant-Man’ and ‘Guardians of the Galaxy.’ They obviously had to start, though, with their big guns and set up ‘The Avengers.’ I kind of feel like that’s where DC is now. They’re setting that team up.”
DC is still in the early stages of World Building and while the ‘Justice League’ films might further introduce us to the galactic side of things by bringing in a Green Lantern, Doomsday, Darkseid, and more, it might just be a little too early to have been pushing for Lobo.
What are your thoughts on the loss of a big screen Lobo? Do you still want an iteration of the movie to happen or does DC need to stick to their plan and make sure that their house is in order and profitable before pushing for more obscure characters? Share your thoughts below!
Source: Screen Rant