Finally we get word that George Miller is off the film version of Justice League of America. We'd been hearing some seriously mixed rumours that he was struggling to get the film made and it had a lot to do with location and budget.

Now it looks like he won't get the chance to make it, and the project will just fizzle out waiting for the individual characters to make their own way in film before the ensemble piece comes back again...possibly.

George Miller had been struggling to try and get Justice League made in Australia and take advantage of the tax breaks to give them back 40% of the production costs, but when it all came down to it Australia just wasn't willing to play ball and the production was looking at moving to Canada, some wrangling ensued and the outcome was that it just didn't happen.

You can read about what happened through the following stories on Justice League: possible delays?, moving forward?, back in production and political battle.

The rumour from Dark Horizons through SuperheroHype has been confirmed by IESB, and says that George Miller is most definitely off of the production and he's not involved in the film in any capacity any more. The rumour goes that the film will be recast, eventually, with big names.

Frankly that makes much more sense, and if they're going with big names then they really should make sure that they go with the actors already playing the characters in the current franchises, anything else is just daft.

Perhaps this will also allow them to do something that I've always felt is very important in these ensemble films, and that is to give the characters their own films first, create their origin films, get their characters defined before they hit an ensemble film.

You see the problem with hitting an ensemble film without these characters already established is that we'll have to see their origins and explanations before we get to the meat of the story, and with so many characters in the ensemble, we'd be waiting a fair while.

Personally I'm glad that they've halted the production, it might give them the time to make this film right, and I was never sure the director of Mad Max and Happy Feet was quite the way to go.