Following his cameo in the after-credits scene of Justice League, Deathstroke will be getting his own solo movie, with Gareth Evans in talks to direct. Evans is well known for making action movies on a shoestring budget; his highly-praised tower block assault film The Raid was made for just $1.1 million. Other recent action flicks, like Dredd and John Wick, were made for roughly $30 million each, proving that it's possible to tell an exciting, action-packed story by using limited resources in a creative way.With the DCEU struggling to find its voice, and a massive catalogue of available characters in DC's roster, Warner Bros. could potentially produce some trulyunique comic book movies on a small budget, and with minimum risk. As such, here are our top picks for DC characters who would be perfect for low-budget movie adaptations.This Page: The Question and Challengers of the Unknown
The Question
The Question has a strange history in comics. Brought over when DC bought out Charlton Comics, Vic Sage has had a rough go of it trying to establish himself with a broader audience. He's been a Zen detective and journalist, a paranoid conspiracy theorist, and an ethereal being as part of the Trinity of Sin. Sage's durability would allow for almost any kind of genre-bending in a Question movie. Something familiar but esoteric like Twin Peaks, a street-level, noirish tale like Out of the Past, or a conspiracy thriller like State of Play and Michael Clayton; he's lived through it all. Maybe you could just mash whatever you'd like into it and see what happens, like Millennium. The fact that Sage's sanity is dubious at best makes him the ultimate unreliable narrator. If that instability is explored, it can be used to create a unique visual and narrative lexicon that would take a potentially mundane tale and turn it into something interesting.
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As a character, the Question is certainly one of the more downtrodden superheroes. He's not particularly wealthy, he's possibly crazy, and he's not great in a fight. That makes the stakes a little higher in his adventures. He's all about the mind, and unfortunately his own mind is a mess. Sage is perfect for a psychological thriller (you really have to take stock of yourself when Batman says you're paranoid) whose plot would reflect the personal struggle the Question is having.
This would be the perfect movie to put character over spectacle. Sage's zen-objectivist philosophy would add a new voice to the rather antiseptic live-action superhero genre. While it may make for something of a risk, it should be noted that Rorschach from Watchmen is a derivative of The Question and Mr. A; not only is Rorschach more controversial, but he's also Watchmen's most enduring and beloved character. There's an audience for him, and very likely for Vic Sage as well.
Challengers of the Unknown
If you want to escape the bleak, urban hellscape of Vic Sage's mind, Warner Bros. could adapt the Challengers of the Unknown. Created in 1957 by comics luminary Jack Kirby, the Challengers are the proto-Fantastic Four, right down to the character descriptions and origin story. (Of course, over the years, the roster has changed to be less reflective of Marvel's first family). Admittedly, Challengers was notably darker”their powers were killing them; the series featured mass murders, nervous breakdowns, etc.”which speaks to the preferred DCEU aesthetic.
Like the Question, the Challengers had a very diverse set of adventures”ranging from the darkest corners of the cosmos to Lovecraftian monsters in the Bermuda Triangle to cults and the occasional mad scientist. The original series is one long acid flashback, which, combined with the fantastical nature of the stories, could sound like an expensive endeavor to translate. Look, if the first Saw movie can look fine with a budget of 30 cents and a half-chewed piece of gum and Dredd created an entire world on not much more, then maybe this a matter of creative ability and not deep pockets.
Dial H For Hero
Okay, enough of the depression. Let's do something that's a little more kid-friendly. They're an exploitable group we can squeeze money from thanks to guilty parents. Dial H for Hero is full of that delightful comic book insanity that only the 60s could have produced. Robby Reed obtains the H-dial device. By dialing H-E-R-O into it, he obtains superpowers. Sometimes they're original powers, sometimes they're the powers of an established DC hero, like Flash and Plastic Man. The series has a similar concept to DC's Captain Marvel and has always retained a kind of youthful sweetness that, with very little modifying, could be turned into a YA license to print money at the box office. Strangely enough, the series has already proven itself in the mainstream. Former JLA writer Joe Kelly pitched a Dial H for Hero series to DC Comics and even wrote the first twelve issues for it. DC declined the pitch, so Kelly made some changes and sold the idea to Cartoon Network, rebranding it as Ben 10, which has accrued $4.5 billion since 2005.
Plastic Man
If comedy is something Warner Bros. wants to attempt, but still focus on a more adult fanbase, Plastic Man would be the way to go. The story of Eel O'Brian is one of redemption: a petty criminal looking to undo the damage he's done and be a good role model for his son. Plastic Man's constant shapeshifting and malleability not only make him visually unique but inherently powerful. Also, he's half crazy. His humor matches his shape”unpredictable. Physical comedy, fart jokes or something brilliantly subversive, with the right writer on board (Grant Morrison or Kyle Baker, for example), Eel O'Brian could become the secret weapon of the DCEU.
Manhunter
Finally, we have Kate Spencer. A Manhunter movie would be as cheap to make as The Question, but with the added risk that she is not very well known. But she's worth the risk. Kate Spencer is what happens when you cross Daredevil with the Punisher. As a district attorney, she had seen too many criminals get off on technicalities. When Copperhead escapes his death sentence and kills two guards, she turns into Michael Douglas from Falling Down. Spencer steals equipment from the evidence locker and kills Copperhead. Blackmailing a weapons broker, she gets more equipment and continues killing bad guys. However, as a lawyer, things get more complicated. She ends up having to defend Doctor Psycho at his trial, and defend Wonder Woman for killing Maxwell Lord at another. It also doesn't help that the Justice League and the federal government are attempting to track down this murderous vigilante everyone's talking about.
On the other side of all this, Spencer is trying to be a good mother to her young son and deal with her divorce. As a character, she combines the bizarre world of superheroes with grounded, street-level threats, and modern concerns over the criminal justice system, managing life as a blended family, and raising children in an increasingly unfamiliar world. Also, Kate Spencer's worth having around for this line at the very least: œMy law partner told me the only job with a higher mortality rate than Gotham D.A. is a Red Shirt on Star Trek.