New Zealand’s Dominion Post reports that effects studio Weta Workshop will design and make the costumes for George Miller’s Justice League of America which, writers’ strike willing, begins filming in Sydney, Australia, later this year.
The Wellington-based physical-effects company is best known for producing the sets, costumes, weapons and creatures for The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

January 7th, 2008 at 11:30 am
Excellent news. We know the movie will look good. Let’s hope they also do the sfx as well.
January 7th, 2008 at 11:55 am
Hmmmm…that could be good. At least they didn’t hire the chick who designed Superman’s costume for Superman Returns. Supes needs a BIG S shield.
I wonder if they make WW more ancient looking or will she look like the comics?
January 7th, 2008 at 11:56 am
Why would they make her ancient looking?
January 7th, 2008 at 1:21 pm
Why would an amazon warrior wear a strapless bathing suit?
You know how Hollywood likes to “think” about heroes costumes and re-imagine them? Like Batman’s costume is all Black and armored, because it “makes sense”? Or the Green Goblin is Iron Man lite in Spider-Man 1?
I expect similar changes here.
January 7th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
So when you say “ancient looking”, you’re talking about the costume? I know it seems obvious because the post is about costumes, but I wasn’t sure.
January 7th, 2008 at 1:33 pm
Yes. I was talking about her costume. Hollywood loves to redesign superheroes. Like Catwoman.
January 7th, 2008 at 1:48 pm
You mean the Green Goblin wasn’t a leftover from the Power Rangers?
Now you tell me!
January 7th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
What about “Jason X”, James Seals? Holy cheese!!!
January 7th, 2008 at 3:14 pm
Even if the costumes are nice — and I do think it’ll be hard to pull off all those brightly colored costumes (save for Bats, though I wonder if he’ll look Nolan’s Batman or if he’ll go grey) — the movie’s still gonna suck and suck hard.
A Batman out of continuity with the excellent work Nolan’s done, a Supes out ouf continuity with the recent SR movie (which sucked, but still), and a bunch of kids barely out of high school playing most of the roles. On top of all of that, it just seems like this was rushed into production.
I’d love to be wrong about all of this, but I don’t see much hope for this one.
January 7th, 2008 at 4:08 pm
Shaun, (1) This film isn’t IN production yetk, it’s in pre-production; so how can they have “rushed” it into production? (2) Why is it that five year old children have an easier time coping with multiple versions of characters than adult fanboys?
There is a Batman cartoon and a Superman (okay “Smallville”) series on right now, plus Superboy in the Legion cartoon, and nobody’s had problems with the Batman and Superman movies over those. Why should another movie be any different?
January 7th, 2008 at 4:36 pm
Batman HAS to be out of continuity. Nolan’s Batman is supposed to be realistic. A Justice League movie done in the Nolan-verse would be the Matrix. No costumes, but leather suits and dusters.
January 7th, 2008 at 4:46 pm
Imagine a member of the JLA in (X-Men) black leather or the red leather look Daredevil pulled off. Hmmm. Looking at the success of the leather-look of those characters, AFTER the fact (because, before the 1st X-Men movie, I had my doubts) you never know. Don’t be surprised to see at least one JLA member in leather. Perhaps the Flash in red leather or Green Lantern in green and black leather. Black Canary will definitely be in black leather and maybe even Batman, but the other characters, I’m not too sure. It should be interesting.
January 7th, 2008 at 4:51 pm
Wonder Woman’s strapless bathing suit?
Don’t you know it’s held up by invisible straps!
Wonder Woman’s fine. Don’t worry about her.
She’s young, just grew into puberty and for the first time in her life she’s been exposed to boys.
Of course she’s going to flaunt. Wonder Woman has always been a coming of age story.
Let the woman feel her strength and know it’s not always her muscles that give her power over men.
January 7th, 2008 at 5:50 pm
“Why is it that five year old children have an easier time coping with multiple versions of characters than adult fanboys?”
There are a few different problems to address here:
1) Flooding the market with too many superhero movies is always a concern.
2) The public at large starts throwing hissy fits when there’s more than one VILLAIN in a movie, let alone seven heroes.
3) There’s what I like to call “House of Frankenstein Syndrome”. Your monster movies making money? Great! Wouldn’t more monsters in one movie make more money? Sure! And wouldn’t more monsters in one movie with the current flavor of the minute comedy duo make even MORE money? Absolutely! It’s a thin line between Dracula, and Abbot and Costello Meet The Mummy, know what I mean?
4) There’s always the chance that the success of this more action-friendly series could outshine the more measured approach found in say, the Nolan Batman series. That’d be the perfect excuse for some suit to start calling for Christian Bale to be replaced by somebody who’ll appeal to the tween market more.
January 7th, 2008 at 5:55 pm
Hey Gordon, how was it “rushed”? Well, those first announcements of the movie, and the targeted release, give an indication that this was whipped together pretty fast, or at least WILL be. Go back and read older articles on this, there are plenty out there. Really, it did kinda come out of nowhere with Bat and (possibly) Supes sequels being talked about, since those franchises were just relaunched.
Secondly, I love how when someone has an opinion that disagrees with theirs the “fanboy” term is trotted out, and used as a putdown. Um, we’re all on this comic book posting our thoughts. Aren’t we ALL fanboys (or fangirls) here? LOL…
Anyhow, a five year old likely doesn’t care who’s playing Batman or Superman. They just see “BATMAN! YAY!” I don’t expect a small child to get worked up over continuity issues, etc. That’s a nitpicking grown-ups, or at least older kids, play.
That said, I think it will confuse the hell out of the general public to have a different Batman in a JLA movie while the solo Bat-franchise is in full swing. If the JLA movie should be a dud, as many seem to think it will(again, look at old talkbacks at the usual sites), that could negatively harm the Nolan series. Or perhaps another (better) Supes movie or any other possible DC films.
Anyhow, having a Batman cartoon aimed at the kiddie audience really has no bearing on a dark, violent film series that is aimed more at adults. Same would go for the Legion cartoon. How does that possibly relate to the Superman of SR? Now two different motion picture versions of the same character at the same time though? That’s just odd.
Maybe it’ll work, but I doubt it. I had bad vibes about SR, X3, and Spidey 3 and I was right about those (at least I feel like I was). We’ll see about this one. This might’ve been better as a Teen Titans project instead.
January 7th, 2008 at 6:03 pm
Shaun-
Superman is on both the Legion cartoon and Batman cartoon, and I don’t think that kids are confused, even though they take place 1000 years apart.
January 7th, 2008 at 6:03 pm
They need to make it look somewhat realistic. Batman’s costume works best black I still don’t get why a “creature of the night wears grey. I used to convince myself the charchol grey helped him blend with shadows more but after Batman Begins I can’t even do that cause it was so well done!
January 7th, 2008 at 6:07 pm
One appearance on the Batman cartoon, and the timelines are totally different. Besides, I was never discussing the cartoons! You kind of probved my point actually. Kids are likely just thinking “Hey! Superman!” and not giving thought to such things as what the continuity of it all is. And why should they? Two different film franchises featuring the same characters though, that’s just strange.
And, FWIW, is that supposed to be SuperMAN on the Legion? I thought it was Superboy, but they simply couldn’t call him that. Since I don’t watch the show, I don’t really know. Anyhow, it’s just one of the many reason why I think the JLA is a bad idea. My opinion. YMMV.
January 8th, 2008 at 1:49 am
Shaun, the second season of Legion of Superheroes aged all the characters. He really is Superman at this point.
January 8th, 2008 at 12:59 pm
I just asked 2 mainstream people I work with and they say they wouldn’t be confused by different actors or stories in the JLA movie vs the Batman or Superman movies.
So stop yer bitching.
January 8th, 2008 at 4:53 pm
Um, Nightwing, have you ever seen REAL bats? Most species are NOT “black”, but rather brown or grey (and some of the browns are a tan or khaki). The simple fact is that the character in question is BatMAN, and there’s no real reason why any dark color couldn’t work, as long as he can blend into shadows.
As to the complaints about the multiple characters (based on complaints about multiple villains in movies), since the story is supposed to be about a GROUP, multiple characters should be expected. (Was the general public confused about the many characters in “Ocean’s 11″ or its TWO sequels? Did the public have a problem with the original “Star Wars” and its fairly large cast–Han, Luke, Leia, Vader, Obi-Wan, C3P0, R2D2, Chewie? Why should there be a problem with a large number of superheroes? Was there significant confusion over the large cast in “Sin City” with its multiple stories and multiple good guys/bad guys?) The trouble with the multiple villains being introduced in the Batman franchise (1989-1996 era) was due to some misguided belief that you needed to “up the stakes” by throwing more bad guys at the good guy(s) in each succeeding movie. I think with the Batman films, the problem was more that the villains didn’t have enough development for the viewers to really care about (as well as the generally poor casting decisions made for the villains).
January 9th, 2008 at 11:08 am
In regards to some of the backlash given my earlier comments, I have to say this is the best news I’ve read all day, and it looks the people commenting agree (read on):
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/justice_league_of_america/news/1701801/
This also seems to support to idea that project has been a rush job, something they’ve been trying to get in front of cameras as quickly as possible, even if the script wasn’t ready for it and the casting (such as it’s been) has been piss poor. Note that someone echoed my comment that this case might be better off doing a TT flick.
So no, Scavenger… I’m not the only one “bitching.” It still doesn’t make sense to do this while the Bat-franchise is full swing, but that would appear to be the least of the problems surrounding this film.
January 9th, 2008 at 11:13 am
I meant to say “this CAST might better off doing a TT flick,” but you get the idea.
January 15th, 2008 at 9:39 pm
I’m not getting my hopes up, with tis project being held up by the strike, BUT the FANTASTIC FOUR and CBS FLASH costumes were pretty decent (esp since Flash was 1990!).
I’ll wait until I see them. Nolan’s costumes were better than Burton and DEFINITELY over Schumacher’s Bat-nips, but then we got the nearly UNrecognizable but decent X-uniforms and Singer’s atrocious S-shield texture laden boitoi.