The Justice League versus Australia; again
By Joshua S Hill
To be perfectly honest, the title should read “Australia versus the Justice League,” simply because it seems that the Australian film industry is trying to shoot itself in the foot; again.
A recent article in the Sydney Morning Herald down here in Australia has provided some big news, and two small pieces of news that seem to have been overlooked. We’ll start with the big news because it could see the JL movie be shipped back away from Australia for filming.
The controversy hinges on whether the Australian film industry will allow a big budget movie like JL the 40% rebate due it if it has an Australian producer. However there are some Australian producers, apparently with a severe desire to see the Australian film industry fall back in to obscurity once again, who want the rebate capped for movies costing $30 million or less.
As an Australian, I’m allowed to take this offensive and angered point of view against these naysayers, but I’m not the only one. George Miller had this to say; “Any form of capping basically means the Australian film industry is going to be restricted to what it’s been for almost two decades - a cottage industry making films that very sadly Australian audiences seem reluctant to see, with some wonderful exceptions, let alone films that get any exposure overseas.”
“One of the reasons for doing Justice League in this country is the opportunity to bring back all the people we lost on Happy Feet who went overseas,” Miller said. “We spent four years developing this talent and the cream of them left because they didn’t have another film to go on to …
“The idea is to say come back, start off on Justice League then move onto Happy Feet 2.”
One of the locations speculated as being a backup to Australia is our fake cousin, Canada. Granted, both of us are fakes of America, but that is another issue altogether.
Now I mentioned two small pieces of news that popped up in this article. The first, thrown away as if 
everyone knew about it, was the fact that the movie is now being called Justice League Mortal. Now many of us are suggesting that the SMH editors forgot a colon, and that it should be Justice League: Mortal. That would make a tad more sense given the theme of the movie. But according to AICN insiders, Mortal is indeed being used on official documents.
And we give our thanks again to Ain’t It Cool News (AICN) for explaining just what the third piece of news was. Deep in the article, three Australian actors are listed as participating in the film; we knew of Megan Gale and Teresa Palmer, but we hadn’t known Hugh Keays-Byrne (—>) was involved.
So, thanks to our good friends over at AICN, they have managed to confirm that he will indeed be involved in the film, and playing everyone’s favorite green alien, the Martian Manhunter.
So, maybe this movie is shaping up a little better, but we’re still dealing with a Justice League movie that doesn’t have Batman or Superman. Who knows, I guess this will be the epitome of having to wait and see.
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Rather than shoot itself in the foot, the Australian film industry is trying to protect itself from being sucked dry by Hollywood greed. Justice League: Mortal’s 40% rebate would drain more than an entire year’s worth of rebates from the government’s film assistance package.
The Australian Government has budgeted $282.9M over four years to implement the producer rebate. That’s $282.9M for all Australian film and TV producers for four years. That’s an average of $70.7M a year for all Australian film and TV producers.
Justice League: Mortal’s 40% rebate would be $88M. That’s almost a third of the entire budget for all the rebates for all Australian film and TV producers for four years. That’s more than an entire year’s worth of rebates for all Australian film and TV producers, gone on one single Hollywood movie.
The rebate package wasn’t designed to feed Hollywood’s greed. It was designed to help Australian producers who don’t have access to Hollywood budgets - the sort of filmmaker George Miller used to be, back when he made his first dramatic movie, about a certain Mad Max.
If George Miller cared about the film industry that gave him his start, he’d be trying to convince his bosses to accept a lower rebate instead of hogging the funds that they covet but that they certainly don’t need.