Back in 2012 there was a lot of buzz about a potential movie adaptation of Lobo, a DC Comics title following the exploits of the titular intergalactic antihero. Brad Peyton was supposedly in place to direct with Dwayne Johnson heavily linked to the lead, but since then, nothing very much seems to have happened.
Peyton and Johnson have since collaborated on disaster-thon San Andreas, and the director has shared his own thoughts on why Lobo has seemingly hit the skids. “I think what’s happening with DC is that they have prioritized what they need to make first in order to kind of lay the foundations for the DC Universe,” explains Peyton to Coming Soon.
“This is what I believe is happening just from what they’ve been talking about. They’re talking about Justice League, Batman v Superman and going into Flash, Wonder Woman, and Aquaman. Those are kind of the pillars of that universe.”
As a result, Lobo seems to have been shunted to the sidelines, although it sounds as though Peyton got as far as submitting a script before the studio went cold on proceedings…
“It’s a real uphill battle to talk people into spending a lot of money to do things correctly,” continues the director. “I was really happy with the script, [though]. I talked with Dwayne about it. Joel Silver and I had a really amazing meeting about it. I did a rewrite of the script and was really, really excited for it. In their estimation, though, he wasn’t one of those main guys… That’s fair enough.”
“I think that, to do any kind of comic book universe correctly, you do need to establish, ‘Here’s the tone. Here’s the main people.’ Then we can grow offshoots from there. With Marvel, they’re now doing smaller characters like Ant-Man and Guardians Of The Galaxy. They obviously had to start, though, with their big guns and set up The Avengers. I kind of feel like that’s where DC is now. They’re setting that team up.”
Peyton sounds hopeful that the project may yet come to fruition further down the track, but for now, it seems as though the DC headliners will take priority. In the meantime, San Andreas will open in the UK on 28 May 2015, and the US the following day.
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