With a history that stretches back to the mid-1930s and hundreds of iconic characters, it’s not surprising that DC dominated comic book TV and movies for decades. From the classic Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman shows in the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s to game-changing films like Superman: The Movie in the and Tim Burton’s Batman, DC helped define what onscreen superhero movies were.
Of course, things have changed a little over the past 20 years. The X-Men series and Sam Raimi’s Spider-man finally gave Marvel fans some successful on-screen superheroes, while the vast success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe set a standard that’s hard to beat. Nevertheless, DC continues to plunder its vast catalog of characters, regularly rebooting classic heroes such as Batman and Superman, and giving others such as Shazam and Harkey Quinn their first cinematic outings.
Unsurprisingly, there’s also a huge number of potential DC movies that have been announced or put into development that never made it to the screen. Some of these were new spins of the company’s biggest heroes, developed by big names like JJ Abrams, Joss Whedon, and Tim Burton. Others were attempts to make movies based on lesser-known figures that for various reasons never got as far as production. Some were literally a few weeks away from shooting, while others never made it past the script stage.
We’ve picked some of the highest-profile and most interesting examples of these. It’s fascinating to think of how the course of DC’s cinematic journey would’ve been affected had they made it to the screen–Nicolas Cage might have forever been associated with the role of Superman, while we might never have seen Christian Bale and Chris Nolan’s take on Batman. So here’s 9 big DC films that we’ll never see.
