According to ScreenRant, J.J. Abrams (Lost, Cloverfield, Star Wars: The Force Awakens) has been developing a new series ‘Justice League: Dark’ for a couple of years on HBO Max, focusing on live-action heroes from the DC Comics universe such as Constantine, Swamp Thing, Etrigan the Demon Warrior, and the occasional Batman who typically handles the darker sides of the superhero lifestyle. Unfortunately, HBO has reportedly canceled this series before the public and fans even get a glimpse of what the show might have looked like.
Warner Bros. Studio have been consistently trying to get a live-action version of Justice League: Dark off the ground for a while but to no avail. Justice League: Dark was initially developed as a featured film, but after being stuck in development for several years, it was scrapped and repackaged into a television series for HBO Max. Abrams had hope of developing the TV series and creating a new cinematic universe where he could have created his feature film originally pitched.
There are some iterations of the macabre adventures of DC superheroes, but they are stuck in animated mediums. Justice League Dark and Justice League Dark: Apokolips War follow the main protagonist and deviance anti-hero ‘John Constantine’ who is an experienced magician of the demonic and occult. Constantine is considered a black sheep in the eyes of the Justice League but is often begrudgingly called for help in times of moral ambiguities and apocalyptic defeat. One case, in particular, finds half of the league murdered and the other half enslaved by war tyrant Darkseid, leaving Constantine to try and piece everything together with a kryptonite-tattooed Superman and a broken faction of the Teen Titans.
Similar DC Comics shows to Justice League: Dark like Madame X and the reboot of Constantine have also been cancelled off HBO Max. This is most likely due to the hard reset of the DC entertainment universe by James Gunn (The Guardians of the Galaxy, The Suicide Squad, Scooby Doo) and Peter Safran (The Conjuring, Shazam!, The Starving Games) after the failure of most major motion pictures and actor discrepancies and controversies. Gunn announced the first chapter of the new universe Chapter 1: Gods and Monsters, involving new projects like Superman: Legacy, The Brave and The Bold, Creature Commandos, Swamp Thing, and Green Lantern series, Lanterns. Read more on MXDWN.
Hopefully the creative team of Gunn and Safran will break the cycle of DC series/film flops and continue onto a second chapter involving themes of magic, demons, and death making way for characters like John Constantine back onto the screen with a revamp of the long awaited Justice League: Dark.