Marvel movies have pretty much taken over the world, and it's gotten to the point that
it's actually difficult to imagine one that’s poorly-received.
But don't worry — they're out there.
Before the MCU took off, Marvel sequels got canceled left and right.
Here are a few projects that’ll never see the light of day.
Sam Raimi's first two Spider-Man movies may have been undisputed classics of the genre,
but Spider-Man 3 was controversial to say the least.
And sure, some loved it, some hated it — but everyone still wanted a fourth movie to wrap
up the loose ends and give that world one final epic swinging scene.
Raimi and his crew knew how high the stakes were, so when Spider-Man 4 went into production,
they dedicated themselves to ending the series on a high note.
According to Den of Geek, the standard cast of Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst and company
would have been joined by John Malkovich as the Vulture, while leaked concept art depicts
Spidey and his winged foe in some pretty incredible aerial tangos.
Spider-Man 4 also would have featured Anne Hathaway as anti-hero Black Cat, and Raimi's
buddy Bruce Campbell was to make the ultimate cameo as Mysterio, finally fulfilling years
of fan demand.
Further plot details are sparse, but since the film was screen-testing red-headed toddlers
for a key role, many also believe Peter and MJ would have ended up having a kid.
So what happened?
Well, Raimi simply wasn't willing to rush.
He'd felt unsatisfied with Spider-Man 3 and refused to cut corners, so when Sony pushed
him against a deadline, he walked away from the project.
Long story short, Sony rebooted… and that didn't go too well, either.
Eventually, Marvel rebooted the character’s story a third time, and now Spidey hangs out
with the Avengers.
“So, you got detention.
You screwed up.
You know what you did wrong, but question is… how are you going to make things right?”
Ang Lee's artsy, experimental Hulk film took a heavy beating when it first premiered in
2003, but in recent years the movie has earned a surprising degree of retroactive acclaim
for at least attempting to do something radically different with the superhero genre.
Considering how weird Hulk was, it's clear the creators weren't planning on establishing
a conventional blockbuster franchise.
However, screenwriter James Schamus has explained that he and Lee did develop story ideas — and
even a script — for the sequel that never happened.
In a 2014 lecture at a BAFTA, Schamus revealed that Hulk 2 would have been set on a Native
American reservation, featuring a radioactivity-fueled storyline beset with deep political allegories,
presumably involving the environment, displacement and other such issues.
USA Today also reported in 2003 that Schamus was thinking of including the gamma-irradiated
Hulk foes known as the Leader and Abomination as villains.
Probably the most exciting news for comic book fans, however, was that Schamus wanted
to incorporate the gray-skinned Hulk sometimes known as "Joe Fixit," a leaner, meaner and
smarter Hulk that embodies Banner's adolescent angst.
While Abomination and the Leader have both since appeared on the big screen in some form
or another, gray Hulk is still waiting in the wings.
Back when the MCU was in its infancy, it seemed almost inevitable that Don Cheadle's Colonel
Jim Rhodes — a.k.a War Machine — would probably get his own movie, especially after
the actor’s successful debut in Iron Man 2.
And it almost happened, too.
Cheadle himself was psyched for the film, telling Empire that the tone would've been
darker and grittier than the Iron Man films, with a storyline where Rhodey goes against
orders on a dangerous mission and becomes a wanted fugitive.
“Why do I even talk to you guys?
Everywhere else, that story kills!”
“That’s the whole story?”
“Yes, it’s Warmachine’s story.”
“It’s very good, then.”
While Rhodes going rogue sounds like a fun enough flick, the project faded away when
Shane Black's then-upcoming Iron Man 3 decided to take the character in a different direction.
These days, the blind vigilante known as Daredevil is best known for his critically acclaimed
TV series, which combines intelligent writing and complex characters with some of the most
intense hallway fights in superhero history.
Back in 2003, though, Daredevil was stuck in a not-so-critically acclaimed Ben Affleck
action movie that missed its mark in a big way.
Before the 2003 movie's negative reputation really sank in, writer and director Mark Stephen
Johnson was pretty jazzed up about a sequel.
In an interview with UGO, he expressed his desire to adapt Frank Miller's venerated "Born
Again" storyline — in which Kingpin finds out Matt Murdock's secret identity, and tears
his life apart — while also inserting a darker, modernized version of the cheesy 1960s
bad guy Mr. Fear.
According to Moviehole, Johnson particularly liked the concept of the "man without fear"
taking on a villain who embodies fear itself.
That’s not a bad idea, but Johnson's direct sequel ended up being replaced by the 2005
movie Elektra, which pretty much killed the series off altogether... until Netflix came
around and showed the world how cool Daredevil can be.
The Fantastic Four are one of the brightest, most wondrous properties in the Marvel wheelhouse
— so somebody had to be smoking something pretty toxic when they decided to produce
the muddled, grim-dark reboot Fant4stic, which flamed out into a box office bomb back in
2015.
Or maybe 20th Century Fox just really, really wanted a version of Reed, Sue, Johnny and
Ben that could exist in the same dark, tortured universe as their more popular X-Men franchise.
Never mind the fact that a celebrity quartet who cheerfully traverses alternate dimensions
has little reason to crossover with an oppressed squad of mutant warriors fighting for survival:
Fox wanted it to happen, and they were going to make it happen.
Before Fant4stic's release, X-Men director Bryan Singer even teased that plans for the
crossover film were "in play," and hinted that it would somehow involve time travel.
After Fant4stic crashed and burned, these discussions went quiet.
No surprise there.
Before the less-than-satisfactory reaction to The Amazing Spider-Man 2 kerplunked Sony's
web-headed reboot series, the studio had huge plans for a Spider-Man cinematic universe
— which is why ASM2 got weighed down by so much world-building.
The centerpiece of their future efforts would have been the trilogy-capping Amazing Spider-Man
3, which was to follow up on Peter's life after the death of Gwen Stacy.
That's where things get a little weird weird.
In an interview with IGN, actor Denis Leary said the third movie would have featured Peter
downing some spooky sci-fi formula which "regenerates" all of his dead loved ones — presumably
including Gwen, Uncle Ben, and Peter's parents.
Fans have speculated that this might have been some cinematic re-imagining of the infamous
Clone Saga — or even just a dream sequence — but nobody’s really sure.
As far as villains go, Harry Osborn actor Dane DeHaan was contracted to return, with
Chris Cooper’s Norman Osborn also likely to appear, off the back of a scene cut from
ASM2 in which Norman's head is severed and cryogenically frozen.
Say what you will about Tim Story's Fantastic Four movies, but they actually did a pretty
good job with the Silver Surfer.
From the beginning, 20th Century Fox intended to follow up the shimmering alien's debut
in Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer with his own solo flick.
They even hired Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski to write a script, with the film
picking up moments after the end of the previous movie, after the Surfer had just defied Galactus
to save Earth.
Realizing that he'd angered his master by reneging on the whole "herald for the world
eater" deal, the Surfer would race back to his homeworld, Zenn-La, to save it from Galactus'
unholy appetite.
According to Straczynski, the movie would also have flashed back to Norrin Radd's origin
story, telling his tale as a more serious, adult story.
Unfortunately, even though Straczynski and actor Doug Jones were game to move forward,
the Fantastic Four sequel's reception wasn't quite so fantastic — so the project was
fired into space.
In retrospect, it's a little weird that the 2009 prequel X-Men Origins: Wolverine wasn't
simply titled “Wolverine", but at the time, Fox wanted to launch a whole series of X-prequels.
According to David Goyer, the plan was for him to write and direct a follow-up titled
X-Men Origins: Magneto, a haunting depiction of how the young Jewish mutant survived the
Nazi concentration camps.
As the film came together, 20th Century Fox hit the pause button, wanting to wait and
see how their Wolverine prequel did before calling action.
As it happens, X-Men Origins: Wolverine became something of a setback for the series, so
Goyer's movie never happened.
Later on, as X-Men producer Lauren Shuler Donner pointed out, a huge amount of Magneto's
origin story ended up sliding into X-Men: First Class instead, rendering the original
concept somewhat pointless.
“I prefer…
Magneto.”
Still, if there's any Marvel "villain" that could hold their own in a solo film, it's
definitely him.
Another thread that those Amazing Spider-Man movies left dangling was the setup for the
Sinister Six, the ultimate team of Spider-baddies now likely destined for a future MCU Spidey
movie.
While the end of ASM2 hinted that the Six were going to roll up in part three, the reality
is that Sony was setting them up for their own Sinister Six movie, with Cabin in the
Woods maestro Drew Goddard at the helm.
As conceived, Sinister Six was going to be a little like the movie Suicide Squad eventually
became.
The bad guys would have been the protagonists, although Goddard had no intentions of watering
down their evilness.
According to SyFy, leaked details suggested that the movie would've seen the Sinister
Six taking on a colossal, cosmic monster named Gog, and that they’d travel down to the
Savage Land, a mysterious dinosaur-filled hot spot in Antarctica.
The team's lineup included Spidey's archenemy, Doctor Octopus — with Goddard hoping to
see Matt Damon in the role — as well as Black Cat, Mysterio, the Vulture, and Tom
Hardy as the Sandman.
The final member of the Sinister Six would have been Spider-Man himself, presumably blackmailed
somehow into joining the team.
The movie was to mostly focus on the dynamic between Spidey and Ock, as they gradually
turn from allies into lifelong foes.
While Stephen Norrington's 1998 vampire flick Blade may have helped establish the struggling
superhero genre and put its title character on the map, it's hard to imagine anyone thinking
there had to be a prequel movie centered all around the movie's chief bad guy, Deacon Frost…
except for Norrington himself, apparently, and Frost actor Stephen Dorff.
A full decade after Blade was released, the duo were discussing the potential of a Deacon
Frost movie.
Stranger still, Dorff has since revealed that he and Norrington both wanted to make an entire
vampire trilogy based around Frost, chronicling the character’s origins with a Scarface-like
tone.
But in an interview with io9, Dorff also explained that neither of them had much interest in
doing a version tied to the Marvel Cinematic Universe — so this project is more than
likely dead and buried.
Though it took years of dedication and a little bit of studio wrangling for Ryan Reynolds
to finally bring a comic book-accurate Deadpool to life, his efforts have since paid off in
spades.
The Deadpool films have become smash hits, turning their wisecracking anti-hero into
a pop culture icon.
After Deadpool 2 introduced the characters of Cable and Domino to great aplomb, it seemed
that the path was clear for a spin-off featuring the X-Force.
Although a movie based around the mutant strike squad has muddled around in development hell
for years, with directors Jeff Wadlow and Joe Carnahan both attached at various points,
the latest news was that Drew Goddard had taken the reigns.
Until Disney came along, that is.
“Oh my God, I’m gonna throw up in my mask… bleugh.”
The exact details regarding Disney's takeover of Fox still need to be ironed out, but so
far it looks like X-Force is an early casualty — since the X-Universe is more than likely
about to be rebooted.
Deadpool and Cable co-creator Rob Liefeld even tweeted a mini-eulogy for it, saying:
"Pour one out for ol' X-Force.
Victim of the merger.
$800 million grosser easy."
In other words, don’t get your hopes up.
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