DC is going through a new era of movie and TV adaptations, with James Gunn and Peter Safran building out a single continuity that includes live-action and animated projects, and a variety of tones that range from hopeful adventure to horror. Both fans and Warner bros. executives hope a unified DC Studios can mitigate the issues that came before, when the DC Extended Universe struggled to turn its ambitious blueprint into a consistent string of hits, and further still to the years before that, when DC’s film slate consisted of largely unconnected projects, many of which stalled in development and never reached a theater. Jeffrey Dean Morgan, now known to genre audiences as Negan on The Walking Dead and its spinoff The Walking Dead: Dead City, was nearly cast in two separate DC roles across that turbulent stretch, and each could have changed DC’s theatrical history.
“In fact, that was the producer, Akiva Goldsman, who did Losers, had the rights to Lobo, and so that was, yeah, that was real talk,” Morgan told Josh Horowitz when asked about the time he almost played Lobo. “And I wanted to do it,” he added. “Fell in love. I had never heard of Lobo, and so I dove right in and was like, ‘Oh yeah.’ It suited my humour and my sarcasm, all that. It didn’t suit my body, but I was like, I got time. I got a year to get big.” Morgan also explained why the project ultimately didn’t move forward. “But it just never came to be,” he explained. “There was a script floating around that needed work. But, you know, that would happen. I think Warner Bros., coming off of Watchmen and Losers, wasn’t having a great time with DC.” Lobo has since made his theatrical debut in Supergirl, played by Jason Momoa.
In addition to Lobo, Morgan was asked to play a particular version of Batman. Morgan played the Comedian in 2009’s Watchmen, under Zack Snyder’s direction. Seven years later, Snyder brought Morgan back into the fold to play Thomas Wayne, Bruce Wayne’s father, in 2016’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. As Morgan revealed in the interview, the reunion came with a tease of something bigger. “Zack’s like, because I remember when he called me to do the role and I was like, ‘Well, it’s just, you know, it’s really nothing.’ And he’s like, ‘I got bigger plans.’ And I was like, ‘Well, Zack, what does that mean, man?’ He’s like, ‘Can you just trust me?’ And I’m like, ‘Oh, of course,’” Morgan recalled. “I’m going to do it even without this incentive of there’s more.”
While Morgan accepted to play Thomas Wayne in a reduced role, that was not the last time he and Snyder talked about the subject. “And so I knew, I sure I knew what it, you know, we would look at each other and we, and I think at one point he like had looked over and just said ‘Flashpoint.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, f-ck. God damn it.’ I almost like don’t want to hear it, right?” Snyder was referencing Flashpoint, the DC Comics storyline by Geoff Johns and Andy Kubert in which Bruce Wayne dies as a child during the alley confrontation that created Batman, leaving his grieving father, Thomas Wayne, to take up the cowl in his place.
Discussions of Morgan taking the Batman mantle preceded the DCEU, starting in the late 2000s. “I remember we started talking about Batman, him and I together on the press tour for Watchmen,” Morgan revealed. “He was like, ‘I would love to see you play Batman.’ I was like, ‘Bro, stop. Stop. I’m going to have a f-cking heart attack right now.’” Once Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice revealed Morgan playing Thomas Wayne opposite Lauren Cohan’s Martha Wayne, fans connected the dots and assumed a Flashpoint Batman was coming. However, Snyder’s departure from the DCEU after Justice League derailed those plans, and when Warner Bros. finally adapted Flashpoint on screen with 2023’s The Flash, the studio cast Michael Keaton and Ben Affleck as Batman variants, dropping the Thomas Wayne angle altogether. “I was so shocked that with Zack and Warner Bros., and that it didn’t work out,” Morgan added. “’Cause I mean I love his stuff and I love that he leans toward the darkness.”
Despite two separate DC opportunities slipping away, Morgan has built a substantial comic-adaptation resume that includes his roles in Watchmen and The Walking Dead, alongside Joe Kessler in Prime Video’s The Boys and the Viltrumite villain Conquest in the animated series Invincible. With DC Studios continuing to expand its slate, the door to an eventual DCU role has not fully closed.
