It looks like another round of bad news is in store for fans of the DCEU. Thanks to a new scoop from The Hollywood Reporter, audiences have learned that the director of Justice League Dark has left the project. Doug Liman has officially exited the feature after boarding the film in August 2016.
Videos by ComicBook.com
According to THR, sources have told the site that Warner Bros. is already looking into other directors who could replace Liman. Right now, Mama director Andy Muschietti is said to be on the studio’s shortlist of directors moving forward.
The news of Liman’s leave has got fans scrambling given the director’s recent talks about Justice League Dark. Not long ago, the director did an interview with Collider where he spoke about his intimate connection with the project.
“I have to have a passionate connection to my films,” Liman said, “which I do with Justice League Dark… I feel a real connection to Justice League Dark. But part of my process is that, when I finish a movie, the movies I choose to do after it are guided by the experience I had on the previous movie.”
The director also told CinemaBlend something similar as Liman gushed about how Justice League Dark would be different from comic book adaptations preceeding it. “I think people will be surprised how character driven and how intimate Justice League Dark is — in kind of a field of bloated comic book movies. We’ve found a way to do something that’s actually really personal and small, and that’s my goal,” Liman revealed,” he explained.
This is not the first superhero film which Liman has found himself stepping away from in recent years. Most notably, Liman was attached to direct a standalone Gambit movie under 20th Century Fox, but he ultimately chose to leave the project. According to Lima, he felt he neede to leave the movie since he had yet to form a personal connection with the feature.
“I never formed a connection. Many of these movies, I don’t have the connection on day one, but I find the connection,” Liman said. “I just never find it. I don’t always find a connection. I want to make a movie that, if anybody else made it, it would be different.”
For now, there is no word on when Justice League Dark will hit theaters, but news about the film will surely be slow-going until Warner Bros. can secure a new director for the film. Before the supernatural DC story can make its way to theaters, fans will get to see the standard Justice League when heroes like Batman and Wonder Woman team up on the big screen this summer.
MORE DC MOVIE NEWS: Why The DCEU Could Win Big in 2017 / Henry Cavill Continues to Tease DCEU Green Lantern / Justice League Cast Member Says It Won’t Be Better Than Marvel’s Avengers
In Justice League, fueled by his restored faith in humanity and inspired by Superman’s selfless act, Bruce Wayne enlists the help of his newfound ally, Diana Prince, to face an even greater enemy. Together, Batman and Wonder Woman work quickly to find and recruit a team of metahumans to stand against this newly awakened threat. But despite the formation of this unprecedented league of heroes—Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Cyborg and The Flash—it may already be too late to save the planet from an assault of catastrophic proportions.
Justice League is directed by Zack Snyder, from a screenplay by Chris Terrio, based on a story by Snyder and Terrio, and stars Ben Affleck, Henry Cavill, Gal Gadot, Jason Momoa, Ezra Miller, Ray Fisher, Amy Adams, Willem Dafoe, Jesse Eisenberg, Jeremy Irons, Diane Lane, Connie Nielsen, J. K. Simmons, and Ciarán Hinds.
