Armie Hammer

With Marvel's "The Avengers" on the horizon, many fans are wondering when DC Entertainment will announce a "Justice League" film. There's no indication of when or if such an announcement will be made, but fans nearly had a "Justice League" movie to call their own three years ago before it got canceled — largely thanks to the Writers Guild of America strike in 2007.

"The Social Network" star Armie Hammer was one of the young actors cast in "Justice League Mortal," a film that never got off the ground but came quite close. Hammer, who would have played Batman in the film, recently spoke with MTV News and recalled the events that led up to the project's termination.

"We had gotten a long way into pre-production," said Hammer about the ill-fated Australia-set production. "We were about to start shooting when the writer's strike happened at the end of 2007, and then the Australian government denied a 40% tax rebate that they thought they were going to have, so a lot of things just when wrong."

"It's unfortunate," he continued, "because the amount of work that was already done — I mean, they had finished pre-production and they were a couple of days away from starting to shoot, so it's a shame that nobody got to see all of the work that got put into it."

But Hammer has a positive outlook on the situation, taking a silver lining away from the film's cancellation: "At the same time, it was a great experience to get to go to Australia for a month and a half!"

On top of that, it's hard to complain about playing the Caped Crusader, even if Hammer only wore the superhero's costume a handful of times in pre-production.

"I loved it," Hammer said of wearing Batman's costume. "But I didn't even get a picture of it!