Doug Liman Talks Justice League Dark Movie

"When Warner Bros. wants to sort of turn the comic book genre on its head, they call me."

By Mike Rougeau

During a chat with director Doug Liman today about his new VR series Invisible (look for more on that soon), we asked the Bourne Identity and Edge of Tomorrow filmmaker about his involvement with Dark Universe, the long-planned feature film adaptation of DC Comics' Justice League Dark.

Here's what Liman had to say to us about that supernatural superhero flick and the proposed Edge of Tomorrow 2:

IGN: Justice League Dark/Dark Universe -- are you excited about working on that?

Doug Liman: Yeah, I mean first of all, I love those characters, and I love Warner Bros., and I love [producer] Scott Rudin, and it’s -- and you know, I get asked to come in and do things that are “unconventional.” If people want conventional, they don’t come to me. It’s why doing Invisible was like right up my alley -- because how can you be conventional when there aren’t even conventions that exist? And so you know when Warner Bros. wants to sort of turn the comic book genre on its head, they call me.

IGN: Would you say that’s the goal with Dark Universe?

Liman: Yeah. It’s like how do you fundamentally reinvent what people are doing? And that’s the good and the bad news of this sort of box I’ve been put in. I mean, you’d think it was by design, but it wasn’t. It is exactly what I should be doing, but I’m just so grateful that -- you know sometimes I’m working on a project and I pitch an idea that’s too conventional, and the producers will say back to me “That’s not Doug Liman enough.” Which is like a weird thing, because I’m like “Well that -- it was my idea! How can you say it’s not me?” And they’re like “No, because when we think of you, we think of like, you know -- that just seems too ordinary.”

So even if I wanted to be a little bit more conventional, like, the system doesn’t want me to be. But since I do treat every project as a form of a film school, “OK I haven’t done that genre and how am I going to do it and how am I going to do it in a way that no one’s done it before,” so that’s, you know, I haven’t done a comic book film, and that’s -- am I going to do it in a new way that’s unlike what anyone else has ever done, and come up with a couple of rules for myself of what we’re not going to do that other people do.

That just automatically puts you on a new track -- same way with The Bourne Identity. I promised myself I wasn’t going to have a “WIJ,” which is a term they used in film school -- “W,” “I,” “J”: Woman In Jeopardy. I went to USC film school, briefly, which is a very traditional film school. A lot of the graduates end up making big Hollywood movies. ... And they’re like look, the third act you have a WIJ. All moves, you know, all movies have a WIJ in the third act -- a woman in jeopardy. That’s how you know you’re in the third act, is a woman’s in jeopardy!

And going into Bourne Identity, I told Matt Damon, on day one -- when I met him the first time to convince him to do the movie -- I was like, “We’re not going to have a WIJ.” I didn’t have a script yet, I said I’m not going to have a WIJ. We’re just not going to take the woman hostage. I don’t know how I’m going to end the movie, but I can tell you right now the CIA is not going to grab Franka Potente.

IGN: So the same rule applies going forward?

Liman: And then you figure out well these rules sometimes exist for a reason -- these cliches exist for a reason, because we actually were having trouble ending Bourne Identity and it was like, at some point I was like “F***. The CIA should just grab Franka Potente. It solves all our problems.” I was like “There’s a reason there’s that rule.” And Matt was like “You promised me no WIJ!” And I was like “You’re right. I did promise you no WIJ. OK, back to the drawing board.”

So I have some rules like that for myself for Dark Universe, and the beauty of Invisible is I didn’t have to rebel against anything else, because there just wasn’t anything else. It must have been like making movies in the ‘20s or things like that, where you just like make the rules.

IGN: Edge of Tomorrow 2 still underway?

Liman: Yeah.

IGN: That’s exciting?

Liman: Yeah, it’s going to revolutionize how people make sequels. It really will.

IGN: I would love for you to expand on that.

Liman: I can’t, but it will. You mark my words.

Doug Liman's virtual reality series Invisible is now available on VR headset systems such as Samsung's Gear VR, Oculus' Rift and the HTC Vive.

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