Over at Deadline Mike Fleming is reporting something that has been floating around in the ether for a while now: that Warner Bros. wants Oscar-winning “Argo” scribe Chris Terrio to pen the studio's planned superhero team-up film “Justice League.”
It seems natural that the studio would go in that direction. First and foremost, Terrio is a writer on “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” with David Goyer. But they keep things tidy and in-house over there, sticking with a close relationship in Zack Snyder for the Superman reboot “Man of Steel,” offering up the role of Batman in that film's sequel to Ben Affleck (who has made each of his directorial efforts at Warner Bros.), etc. It also lends an extra bit of cachet to the overall enterprise, as Marvel certainly doesn't have any Oscar-winning screenwriters on their projects. Not that this is a contest (heh).
Last we heard from Terrio he was busy walking to the stage to accept an Academy Award that virtually no one predicted. All eyes were on Tony Kushner and “Lincoln” toward the end of that Oscar season, but Terrio swept in and took the WGA and Academy prizes for WB's Best Picture winner, which of course was directed by Affleck.
We'll see if Terrio accepts the offer. He has major projects still set up with Affleck and Matt Damon, as well as “The Ends of the Earth” (which Harvey Weinstein shrewdly used as a pawn to get the press writing about Jennifer Lawrence and David O. Russell on the last day of Oscar voting in early 2013).
More on all of this madness, surely, when Warner Bros. hits Hall H tomorrow in San Diego.