Guillermo del Toro has finally sent the completed script for his long-gestating Justice League Dark movie to Warner Bros., Forbes reports. Originally confirmed by the director in 2013, the movie—which is tentatively titled Dark Universe, but could ultimately be called a number of things, including Justice League Dark—is based on the DC comics series that calls upon some of the publisher’s supernatural characters to take on the jobs too weird and grisly for the regular Justice League. The original members of the team included John Constantine, Madame Xanadu, Deadman, Shade, the Changing Man, and Zatanna, but the group has inducted the likes of Frankenstein and Swamp Thing over the years.
Fans of Justice League Dark were worried about the fate of the project for various reasons, including that NBC recently launched its own Constantine television series and that the movie was not included in that leaked slate of upcoming DC films. Then there’s the added worry of this simply being a del Toro project, many of which are trapped in Development Hell for years and never actually see the light of day. However, there are consolations for these respective worries. First, NBC might be cancelling Constantine, so worries about spreading that character too thinly across multiple platforms are evaporating. Second, if DC likes the story, it probably won’t have any reservations about adding the movie to its release slate, because it also likes money. And last, del Toro has sent the completed script to Warner Bros.!
Here’s hoping that the studio gives some positive feedback on the script and that the project will move forward. There’s no word yet on whether Justice League Dark would eventually merge with other DC film properties (the latest rumor is that it won’t), but if anyone can make a movie that doesn’t feel standardized, it’s del Toro.