Originally published October 16, 2015. Updated March 1, 2020.
During an interview with Den of Geek, comic book movie regular David S. Goyer (The Dark Knight Trilogy, Man of Steel) has been speaking about Green Arrow: Escape From Super Max, a shelved script he penned in the mid-2000s.
Co-written with Justin Marks, the project would have seen Oliver Queen framed for murder and sent to a maximum security prison packed with DC villains, including the likes of The Joker, The Riddler and Lex Luthor.
Asked whether he felt it was ahead of its time given the upcoming Suicide Squad, Goyer responded that: “I think it absolutely was. I think if that script had come over the transom a couple of years later… It was completely ahead of its time.”
“You know, Marvel was considering doing the Sinister Six and at the time, God, I think this was eight or nine years ago that we wrote a couple of drafts,” he continues. “It certainly was like this oddball project at Warner Bros at the time, they were like – even though the script was good – ‘why would we make a movie about a bunch of villains? That makes no sense’.”
As for why the plug was pulled, Goyer revealed that: “The executive on it was really visionary, but the higher-ups, none of whom are at Warner Bros any more, just thought at the time, you know, we just want to make Batman and Superman movies. We don’t want to make any other characters. But this is before Marvel had really taken off, before more obscure projects like Guardians Of The Galaxy or Ant-Man or things like that had huge success, before the current gold rush I guess, if you will. It’s natural that eventually someone was going to make a villain movie, so that’s just what happened.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PL18yMRIfoszEaHYNDTy5C-cH9Oa2gN5ng&v=C_zu6XuI_g4
