Three days ago, Joseph Kahn, the director of Torque (2004) and the unauthorized Power/Rangers (2015) short film, posted “Swamp Thing Animation” video on his Vimeo account, revealing a snippet of his pitch for the unmade Dark Universe (also known as Justice League Dark) live-action film.
“I pitched on Dark Universe before it became an animated movie,” Kahn wrote. “Here’s an 8 second test of Swamp Thing I designed.”
Videos by ComicBook.com
Kahn worked with conceptual artist Justin Goby Fields, sound mixer Fletcher Alliston, and the VFX were created by Ingenuity Studios for this portion of his pitch.
Back in 2013, filmmaker Guillermo del Toro (Hellboy, Pacific Rim) revealed that he was developing Dark Universe for Warner Brothers. He would later reveal that the film would feature Swamp Thing, John Constantine, The Spectre, Deadman, Zatanna, and Zatara. However, like many of del Toro’s projects, this too would never quite get off the ground.
But instead of scrapping it entirely, WB chose to make it their next animated feature film, which they formally announced this past weekend at San Diego Comic-Con. The film is titled Justice League Dark and features Batman (voiced by Jason O’Mara), John Constantine (voiced by Matt Ryan), Zatanna (voiced by Camille Luddington), Deadman (voiced by Nicholas Turturro), Swamp Thing, Jason Blood/Etrigan the Demon (voiced by Ray Chase), and Black Orchid.
Justice League Dark, an adaptation of the popular comic book series that will bring John Constantine to the world of animation for the first time in a supernatural story that promises plenty of mystery and thrills, along with an amazing voice cast. While Constantine’s world of demons and magic are an important part of the DC Universe, it’s been largely unexplored in DC’s connected universe of animated movies until now.
Justice League Dark is coming fall 2016 to DVD, Blu-ray, and Digital HD.