Dream Casting: Justice Society of America

Dream Casting is an imaginative look at the casting process of potential Hollywood projects based on comics and other media. This isn't just about what is being made; this is about what should be made, and who we think should be the stars.

With the success of Aquaman and buzz for the upcoming Shazam!, it's clear that the era when DC movies are all expected to be dark and angsty is long gone. With that in mind, I thought it would be fun to imagine a movie version of DC's first super-team, the Justice Society of America.

A Justice Society movie would be set in the 1940s and feature the team against one of their most long-standing enemies, the Ultra-Humanite. It should include Wonder Woman, who was canonically around back then and has a long history with the team in comics, as well as nine heroes who would be new to the DCEU.

The Jay Garrick Flash is the likable everyman hero of the Golden Age, which is the sort of role Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Looper) will be great at playing.

John Krasinski (A Quiet Place, Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan) might need a more clean-cut and blond-haired makeover to play Alan Scott, but that's easy to arrange. He brings his effortless charm and action-hero energy to the role.

Hawkman was hugely important to the Justice Society in the '40s, but he's not exactly a widely-beloved hero in 2019. On the other hand, Oscar Isaac (Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Annihilation) basically is a widely-beloved hero in 2019, and he can bridge that gap.

Isaiah Mustafa (Shadowhunters: The Mortal Instruments) has both the size and build to play a heavyweight boxing champion and the sense of fun to play a guy who dresses up like a cat to punch criminals.

Gugu Mbatha-Raw (The Cloverfield Paradox) will not only make a great Black Canary in her own right, she could believably be related to Jurnee Smollett-Bell's modern Black Canary in the upcoming Birds of Prey movie... although at this point she should probably be her grandmother, rather than her mother as in the original comics.

Kieran Culkin (Scott Pilgrim vs. the World) has a rumpled, sleepy-eyed demeanor that will serve him well as the atypical hero known as the Sandman.

The original Atom didn't have superpowers, he was just a diminutive tough guy. Moises Arias (Jean-Claude Van Johnson) is only 4'11", but with the right mask and some added muscle, he could still be pretty intimidating.

Avan Jogia (Ghost Wars) has a great look for playing a wizard, which is important because there's no way a cinematic Doctor Fate will keep that full-face helmet on as often as the comics version does.

The original Red Tornado was never really that big a presence in the Justice Society, but she's one of the most memorable characters associated with them, so I'm including her. She's a middle-aged working-class mom who looks so burly in her superhero outfit that people commonly mistake her for a man, which is something Dot-Marie Jones (Glee) is uniquely well-suited for.

Emily Blunt (A Quiet Place, Mary Poppins Returns) will make a fantastic supervillain, and she'll obviously also be believable as one whose brain has been implanted in the body of a beautiful actress. If the character returns for a movie set in the modern day, they can deal with the whole white ape aspect then.