Having stepped in to rework David S. Goyer’s script for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, screenwriter Chris Terrio has now extended his stay in the DC universe, penning the script for the upcoming ensemble Justice League. Terrio, who won an Oscar for his work alongside Ben Affleck on Argo, has been speaking to the Wall Street Journal about the project, and why he decided to get involved.
“I initially thought I wasn’t the guy to do Justice League and went off to work on something else. But the first day I went to the set, I saw Jesse [Eisenberg] in a scene with Holly Hunter and I really did feel like I was watching some strange, great performance in an independent film. At that moment, I thought, ‘I’m not done with this yet. I want to go back and keep telling the story.'”
Terrio then went on to discuss how Justice League will differ in tone from Dawn of Justice: “Batman v Superman is a bit of an Empire Strikes Back or Two Towers or any similar middle film in a trilogy. The middle film tends to be the darkest one. I do think from Man of Steel through Justice League, it is one saga really. I expect Justice League will be tonally not quite as dark as Batman v Superman. From that point of view, I felt compelled to go back and try to lift us and myself into a different tonal place because I think when you write a darker film, sometimes you want to redeem it all a bit.”
SEE ALSO: J.K. Simmons to play Commissioner Gordon in Justice League
The screenwriter also revealed that he may not return for Justice League Part Two: “I have written Justice League Part One, but I won’t necessarily write Part Two. This has been the most rigorous intellectual exercise I’ve had in my writing life. For Batman v Superman, I wanted to really dig into everything from ideas about American power to the structure of revenge tragedies to the huge canon of DC Comics to Amazon mythology. For Justice League, I could be reading in the same day about red- and blueshifts in physics, Diodorus of Sicily and his account of the war between Amazons and Atlanteans, or deep-sea biology and what kind of life plausibly might be in the Mariana Trench. If you told me the most rigorous dramaturgical and intellectual product of my life would be superhero movies, I would say you were crazy. But I do think fans deserve that. I felt I owed the fan base all of my body and soul for two years because anything less wouldn’t have been appreciating the opportunity I had.”
Justice League Part One and Part Two will reunite Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice stars Henry Cavill as Superman, Ben Affleck as Batman, Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman, Ray Fisher as Cyborg, Jason Mamoa as Aquaman and Ezra Miller as The Flash, while J.K. Simmons (Whiplash) will play Commissioner Gordon. Part One is set for release on November 17th 2017, with Part Two following on June 14th 2019.
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Originally published March 11, 2016. Updated April 15, 2018.
