12 Canceled Comic Book Movies We're Glad Were Never Made

Superhero fans love nothing more than to live in what-if land. What if this comic book movie happened? What if this actor was actually cast as that character? Yet, among these endless possibilities, there are also a bunch of canceled comic book movies we're glad were never made. Why? Because all the signs pointed to them being awful.

"Oh, you have a crystal ball and can see into the future now, loser?" you may be asking. Actually, no. It's a case that based on the information available, and people linked to the productions, the chances of the projects being successful were minimal at best. If proven wrong, sure, the sole of a size 10 Nike Air sneaker would go down well with some ketchup and mustard as punishment.

Let's be real, though: Who ever asked for a "Multiple Man" movie starring James Franco? What about "Silver & Black," which sounds like the worst of "Madame Web" and "Morbius" all rolled into one? And doesn't the thought of Jack Black's "Green Lantern" send shivers down the spine that it could be more terrible than Ryan Reynold's movie? These aren't just films; they're threats to the sanctity of the comic book movie genre. So, let's take a look at all the bullets dodged over the years.

The year 2004 proved to be a special one for the comic book movie genre. It was the year in which two of the best superhero films ever were released: "Spider-Man 2" and "The Incredibles." Oh, and it was also the year in which Warner Bros. approached comedian Robert Smigel to write a "Green Lantern" film, which would have starred Jack Black. As soon as the internet heard about it, though, fans made sure that Warner Bros. knew exactly what they thought of the idea — politely, naturally.

Well, it appears as if we all owe these online heroes our undying gratitude, because their concentrated outrage stopped this bad idea from happening. Written as a comedy, the Green Lantern ring malfunctions, mistakenly finding reality TV star Jud (Black) instead of Hal Jordan. Of course, Jud is completely out of his depth and not superhero material at all, so he fumbles his way through the Green Lantern Corps to ultimately find the hero inside himself. Doesn't this sound a little bit like a live-action "Kung Fu Panda" but with a Green Lantern rather than Po?

Look, it's difficult to determine how this film would have fared, but remove the Green Lantern elements and maybe it could have been a fun project for Black to get weird in. Yeah, Ryan Reynolds' 2011 film isn't exactly "Casablanca" by comparison, but it at least tries to respect the lore rather than go full-blown goofball.

In 2007, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson was cast as Black Adam, who was set to appear in a "Shazam!" movie. Well, that project took various twists and turns after that, seeing my grandfather graduate college, start a family, my parents' birth, my own birth, and eventually the release of 2022's "Black Adam," which changed the hierarchy of power ... Okay, that joke's getting stale now.

As the role of Black Adam struggled to take off, rumors swirled that Johnson was offered another superhero part in 2012: Lobo. The actor confirmed it on X, writing, "Rumors of me possibly playing Lobo are true. Joel Silver and Brad Peyton working on it now. That could be fun." Peyton and Johnson collaborated on several films, such as "Journey 2: The Mysterious Island," "San Andreas," and "Rampage." However, Johnson would depart the project by 2013.

It isn't too difficult to see how someone could imagine Johnson as the Main Man either; he's muscular, charismatic, and would probably look good chomping on a cigar while wearing a black wig. In a world in which Jason Momoa and Jeffrey Dean Morgan exist, though, why is anyone even talking about the possibility of Johnson as Lobo? Also, the team of Peyton and Johnson often produce entertaining if not shallow movies, and is that really what DC needed while trying to build out its own universe in the 2010s?

Before Robert Downey Jr. suited up as Iron Man and kickstarted the most successful shared universe in film history, there were earlier plans for a movie about ol' tin head. After working on "Smallville" and "Spider-Man 2," Alfred Gough and Miles Millar were approached by producers Avi Arad and Kevin Feige about writing a script for "Iron Man." While both creators admitted they weren't familiar with the character, they saw it as an opportunity to do a superhero project that wasn't centered around a teenager. They wrote a script and joined the team to pitch it to New Line Cinema, but New Line wasn't on board, and that was that.

In 2005, Tom Cruise confirmed to IGN that he'd been approached to play Iron Man, but he walked away from the project. "They came to me at a certain point and, when I do something, I wanna do it right," he said. "If I commit to something, it has to be done in a way that I know it's gonna be something special. And as it was lining up, it just didn't feel to me like it was gonna work."

An "Iron Man" film written by Gough and Millar and starring Cruise doesn't sound like the worst idea in the world. In fact, it titillates. However, if this version of the film had gone into development, that means RDJ's Tony Stark wouldn't have existed. Sorry, Tom, but it's Team RDJ all day, every day, here.

Have you ever looked at the price of a gas station sandwich and thought, "Wow. That's cheap!" Well, I guarantee that Cannon Films figured out a way to make a movie for less than that in the '80s. At one point, Cannon Film's "Spider-Man" nearly turned into a reality, after Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus bought the film rights to Spider-Man for $225,000, as per the Los Angeles Times.

According to filmmaker Joseph Zito, who was hired to direct Cannon Films' "Spider-Man," Golan and Globus didn't know much about the source material. For them, they thought Spider-Man was akin to the Wolf Man, hence them hiring "The Outer Limits" creator Leslie Stevens to write a script whereby Peter Parker actually turns into an eight-legged spider monster, because why not? Common sense prevailed at some point — or maybe someone read a comic book, you know — and Cannon started over on the film, as it underwent multiple script rewrites.

While Cannon Films' "Spider-Man" never came to fruition, a teaser trailer was created for it, which can be viewed on YouTube. Look, the Web-Head doesn't have eight limbs here, but there are kids' costumes with better production value than this. Every single person on Earth knows this film would have been as cheaply made as humanly possible, because Cannon's motto was: with great power comes greater budget cuts. Stevens' eight-legged spider monster idea eventually became canon thanks to Doppelganger, who became a version of Spider-Man in the comics.

Even Ben Affleck regrets 2003's "Daredevil," which tells you everything that you need to know about the movie. Is it the worst superhero film of all time? No, but it's a poster child of what a Hollywood studio thinks a comic book movie should be after reading a Wikipedia article about a character and trying to reverse engineer it for the four quadrants. Not a single soul asked for the "Elektra" movie that arrived two years thereafter, but it could have been even worse: "Daredevil 2."

Despite the bad reviews, "Daredevil" knocked it out the park at the box office, making $179.2 million from a $78 million budget, so a sequel was always in consideration. In 2003, writer-director Mark Steven Johnson told UGO that talks had taken place about possibly adapting Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli's "Born Again" or Kevin Smith, Joe Quesada, and Jimmy Palmiotti's "Guardian Devil" for "Daredevil 2." In 2004, Affleck shared a similar sentiment, saying he would consider putting on the costume again if the material was darker. Ultimately, though, Affleck decided to leave the horned one in his past.

In retrospect, it was a wise decision. Despite Johnson and Affleck pushing for a more mature sequel, it was highly unlikely at that point in time (remember, this is pre-"The Dark Knight" in comic book movie history). In all likelihood, 20th Century Fox would have wanted more of the same, with even more Evanescence songs.

If you're looking for the cinematic equivalent of throwing stuff against the wall to see what sticks, look no further than Sony's "Spider-Man" Universe. Seeing the success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Sony attempted to recreate a similar experience with its own extensive catalog of Spider-Man-related characters. There's one problem, though: most of these characters aren't interesting enough to merit their own solo films.

Anyway, as the MCU powered to billion-dollar hit after billion-dollar hit, Sony decided to go full steam ahead with its own universe plans. At one point, the studio hired Gina Prince-Bythewood to write and direct a "Silver & Black" film, which would have been a team-up movie featuring Silver Sable and Black Cat. By 2018, though, Sony decided to scrap "Silver & Black" in favor of standalone films for each character.

Judging by the results of "Morbius," "Madame Web," and "Kraven the Hunter," there's little doubt that "Silver & Black" would have turned into a corporate-meddled affair. Prince-Bythewood knows how to handle superheroes — just look at what she did with "The Old Guard" — but it would have been an uphill battle to execute her vision and satisfy the bean counters. And let's face it: Sony's Spider-Man Universe only makes sense to the people who work at Sony.

Think of Marvel's mutants, and which is the first name that comes to mind? Wolverine? Professor Xavier? Jean Grey? Storm? Or maybe Gambit? One name who definitely won't feature in either the top 10 or 20 is Jamie Madrox, aka Multiple Man. Oh, he's a character who can multiply himself. Big whoop!

In 2017, though, news broke that Allan Heinberg was writing a script for a "Multiple Man" movie, in which James Franco would produce and star in. It was all part of 20th Century Fox's plans to expand its X-Men Universe, especially since "Deadpool" had practically printed money for the studio, so the executives likely threw a dart at a board with a bunch of mutant names, and bingo! A "Multiple Man" movie was next on the list. Two events stopped it from happening, though: Disney's acquisition of Fox and allegations against Franco a year later.

All in all, no one missed out on anything here, except for the five fans of Multiple Man, who may have held out for a movie about their favorite all their lives. Not every auxiliary comic book character needs a film or TV show — something that several studios and networks have figured out in recent years.

In a previous piece about the best superhero teams from Marvel and DC Comics, I threw a little shade at Alpha Flight. Now, there's no intent to bully the Canadian group, nor poke too much fun at them, because again, Puck and Sasquatch rule, but please, who are we trying to fool here? Alpha Flight isn't the next Guardians of the Galaxy nor X-Men.

As it turns out, though, 20th Century Fox thought it could do something with them. In 2017, producer Simon Kinberg told ComicBook.com about some of the plans in the works. "We have a sense of where each of all of the existing characters go from 'Deadpool' to 'New Mutants' to the mainland 'X-Men' movies to potentially even X-23," Kinberg said. "Then, there's other characters, like X-Flight, like Exiles ..."

The X-Flight that Kinberg is talking about is Alpha Flight. Now, everyone makes mistakes, and it's possible that the group's name slipped Kinberg's mind at that moment, but the fact they're this unmemorable should say everything there is to say. I don't want to sound like Regina George, but like "fetch," let's stop trying to make Alpha Flight happen.

Prior to Christopher Nolan taking the reins for Batman in the mid-2000s, Darren Aronofsky pitched his version of a Dark Knight movie to the studio. The filmmaker wanted to adapt the comic book storyline "Batman: Year One" by Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli. Aronofsky even enlisted Miller to work on the script, which would have been darker than the source material.

Okay, this sounds awesome, so how can this be one of the canceled comic book movies we're glad was never made? "The studio wanted Freddie Prinze Jr. and I wanted Joaquin Phoenix," Aronofsky told Empire in 2020. "I remember thinking, 'Uh oh, we're making two different films here.'" Effectively, Warner Bros. killed Darren Aronofsky's Batman movie because he wanted Joaquin Phoenix — and not their chosen one.

What's scarier to think about is how the studio wanted Prinze as the next Batman after the failed George Clooney experiment in "Batman & Robin" — and it could have happened too had someone at Warner Bros. pushed hard enough for it. No disrespect to Prinze, who is a fine performer, but nothing about him screams Dark Knight, nor is it a casting that anyone clamored for. Instead, this looked like another situation of WB trying to fit a square peg into a bat-shaped hole.

When "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III" hit in 1993, it was obvious that turtle power was turning into turtle poop. The films ran out of steam, with the audience requiring a cinematic breather from Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael, and Michelangelo's adventures. Still, all the movies had made decent money at the box office, so naturally, the execs wanted to squeeze every last drop out of the franchise.

A fourth film, titled "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: The Foot Walks Again" at one point, was greenlit. Several drafts were penned, including a version by Christian Ford and Roger Soffer and another by Craig Shapiro and John Travis. Not much is known about the unproduced fourth "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" film apart from Kevin Eastman's concept art, which was sold by Heritage Auctions. Judging by the designs, ideas included the return of Super Shredder, a new turtle named Kirby, Casey Jones receiving cybernetic enhancements for his arm, and an evil version of April O'Neil.

While a few of these designs hint at interesting story potential, there's no question that the franchise had painted itself into a corner after the choices made in previous films. In the mid-'90s, the Ninja Turtles needed a reboot — not a fourth film. Fortunately, that's exactly what happened.

Before the announcement that James Gunn and Peter Safran would head up the new era of DC at Warner Bros., the cinematic universe stood in a state of total confusion. Everything seemed to be willy-nilly, as no one knew what fit in where and how. One of the stranger films announced in 2022 was a "Wonder Twins" movie that was set to go straight to HBO Max. Starring as the super-powered twins Zan and Jayna would be KJ Apa and Isabel May.

Could a fun "Wonder Twins" film work? Absolutely, but not under the previous DC regime. At that point, chaos ran amok, with no clear plan in place. Everyone could see that the DC Universe needed a drastic course correct and for more cohesion in its storytelling. What it didn't require was more superheroes thrown into the mix for the sake of creating content.

If you need proof of it, just consider how the leads for "The Wonder Twins" were announced in April 2022, then the film was canceled a month later. That tells you all you need to know about this situation. One hand didn't even know if the other was connected to the same body.

One of the canceled comic book movies we're glad was never made is "Green Lantern 2" — yes, a sequel to Ryan Reynolds' 2011 movie. Lest we forget, "Green Lantern" was supposed to be the starting block for the DC Extended Universe, but the box office disappointment coupled with the abysmal reviews had Warner Bros. and DC thinking, "Eh. Maybe we should try starting over with a different character?"

Had the film made money — regardless of how many things in "Green Lantern" make no sense — then we would have been subjected to more of Reynolds' Hal Jordan in a CGI green suit. Funnily enough, Warner Bros. didn't envision a timeline where "Green Lantern" could have been anything less than a success. So much so that it rehired Greg Berlanti, Michael Green, and Marc Guggenheim to write the screenplay for the sequel — as well as a "Flash" film — in 2010, as per The Hollywood Reporter.

Considering how weak the script for "Green Lantern" was in the first place, bringing back the same writers is unlikely to have improved the follow-up. Look, this iteration of the Emerald Knight just didn't work. It was always best to move on rather than patch the holes over the giant cracks where a coherent storyline should have been.