It was just a few years back that director Brad Peyton, fresh off the box office success of his second feature film, Journey 2: The Mysterious Island, signed on to develop a feature film based on DC Comics’ intergalactic antihero, Lobo. Word even followed that the film, to be produced by Joel Silver, looked like it was going to star Journey‘s Dwayne Johnson as the Main Man. Although Johnson and Peyton did reteam, their second project together became this month’s disaster actioner San Andreas instead. Meanwhile, the big screen DC Universe was officially revealed last October without a Czarnian in sight.

“I think what’s happening with DC is that they have prioritized what they need to make first in order to kind of lay the foundations for the DC Universe,” Peyton told ComingSoon.net this weekend at the San Andreas junket. “This is what I believe is happening just from what they’ve been taking about. They’re talking about ‘Justice League,’ ‘Batman v Superman,’ and going into ‘Flash,’ ‘Wonder Woman,’ and ‘Aquaman.’ Those are kind of the pillars of that universe.”

Unfortunately for the project, it sounds like Lobo was put on the back burner at the studio, despite having a completed screenplay.

“It’s one of those things where, creatively, you and I get it, but there’s a lot of people that don’t quite get that,” Peyton said when asked if the success of Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy helped bolster the chances of a film based on a similarly comedically irreverent space-traveling comic book character. “It’s a real uphill battle to talk people into spending a lot of money to do things correctly… I was really happy with the script, [though]. I talked with Dwayne about it. Joel Silver and I had a really amazing meeting about it. I did a rewrite of the script and was really, really excited for it. In their estimation, though, he wasn’t one of those main guys… That’s fair enough. I think that, to do any kind of comic book universe correctly, you do need to establish, ‘Here’s the tone. Here’s the main people.’ Then we can grow offshoots from there. With Marvel, they’re now doing smaller characters like ‘Ant-Man’ and ‘Guardians of the Galaxy.’ They obviously had to start, though, with their big guns and set up ‘The Avengers.’ I kind of feel like that’s where DC is now. They’re setting that team up.”

Does that mean that Lobo could return somewhere down the line? Peyton seems optimistic at the prospect.

“I think there’s going to be a really amazing time for ‘Lobo’ and I think people are going to realize, certainly once they revisit it, what they’re sitting on,” he says. “But you never know. I’m really happy with the project and where we got it and fingers crossed it comes to fruition at some point.”

Of course, Johnson has since committed to playing Black Adam in Shazam. Would you be happy with Johnson playing two roles in the big screen DC Universe or do you think a new Lobo would need to be found?

We’ll have lots more from Peyton and the cast of San Andreas soon, so check back and catch the film in 2D and 3D theaters on May 29.