The future of superhero movies seems brighter than ever.
With the sheer amount of characters in the Marvel Universe, the possibilities are endless.
Of course, not all pitches make it to production, and many projects have fizzled through the
journey from page to screen.
A movie featuring the Inhumans was announced by Marvel Studios in 2014, for release in
November 2018.
But it seems like a movie that Marvel Studios didn't really want to make.
What happened?
According to numerous reports, the film was announced during a power struggle between
Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige and Marvel Entertainment chairman Ike Perlmutter, who
at the time was still overseeing the work of Marvel Studios.
If you believe what's been reported as Feige's side of things, then the executive also spent
a lot of time getting in the company's way.
Feige allegedly spent years butting heads with Perlmutter over a wide variety of issues,
from budget cuts to hiring decisions.
When he was still working as Feige's intermediary with Disney, Perlmutter reportedly pushed
hard for an Inhumans film to serve as the MCU's answer to the X-Men.
But it wasn't meant to be.
After Perlmutter demanded that the expensive Robert Downey Jr. be written out of Captain
America: Civil War, Feige reportedly threatened to quit working for Marvel unless things changed.
This apparently convinced Disney to let him and Marvel Studios report directly to them
for filmmaking decisions, instead of having to go through Perlmutter and the wider Marvel
Entertainment company first.
Once this creative freedom was secured, the Inhumans movie was cancelled.
"You should have known this day was coming."
While Marvel Studios no longer has to answer to Perlmutter, Marvel Television is a different
story, which is why the Inhumans eventually ended up landing on ABC with a remarkably
cheap-looking TV show, the worst-reviewed project in the entire MCU.
Before directing the two Ant-Man movies, Peyton Reed had plans to create a Fantastic Four
film, developing his own pitch for the project in the early 2000s.
According to an interview with Collider, the film was going to be set in the '60s and be
tonally similar to the Beatles film A Hard Day's Night.
Notably, his take would have skipped the origin story, instead jumping straight into the action.
"Johnny."
"This is Dolce.
Flame on!"
Sadly, Fox didn't have much faith in the project.
According to Reed,
"We shall mount a musical of the Fantastic Four."
The Silver Surfer is a cosmic entity who travels through space on his surfboard at the speed
of light.
That's already a pretty weird concept, so maybe it's not too surprising that the character
almost took a left turn into the musical genre.
According to Sean Howe's book Marvel Comics: The Untold Story, Lee Kramer, executive producer
for the movie Xanadu, expressed interest in making a Silver Surfer rock musical during
the 1980s.
Kramer said of the project,
The film would have reportedly starred Olivia-Newton John, also fresh off of Xanadu, but she wasn't
the only big name attached to the project.
Paul McCartney was asked to contribute to the soundtrack, a more reasonable request
than you might expect, considering that the ex-Beatle is an avowed Marvel fan who even
wrote a song about Magneto and Titanium Man.
Ultimately, the project fell through, and we wouldn't see the likes of Norrin Radd on
the big screen until 2007's Fantastic Four: Rise of The Silver Surfer.
After that exceedingly bland blockbuster, it's fair to ask, could the musical option
have been any good?
It's hard to say, but hey, it couldn't have been much worse than Spider-Man: Turn Off
the Dark.
Made famous by Scarlett Johansson's portrayal in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Black Widow
has become a bigger fan favorite than ever before, with a self-titled movie on the way
in 2020.
But that won't be the first time that Marvel's tried to show audiences the backstory of this
former spy.
"We need you to come in."
"Are you kidding?
I'm working."
"This takes precedence."
"I'm in the middle of an interrogation, this moron is giving me everything."
"What?"
Though many people know David Hayter as the voice of Solid Snake in the Metal Gear series,
he's also had a successful career as a screenwriter.
In a 2014 interview with Latino Review, Hayter revealed that he'd written a Black Widow script
ten years prior, and was even attached to direct the project at one point.
Hayter alleged that the poor performance of other action films starring women, in an era
defined by flops like Elektra and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, was the main factor that caused
Marvel to get cold feet and shelve the project.
Funny how things can change.
Throughout the 80s and 90s, DC Comics and Warner Bros. saw plenty of success with Batman
and Superman, while Marvel was having a tougher time.
But that didn't deter one actor's aspirations of bringing one of the company's iconic heroes
to the big screen for the first time.
In the mid-'90s, Wesley Snipes was coming off a string of successful movies, and had
a vision for his own superhero vehicle: an adaptation of Marvel's Black Panther comics.
But the process proved more difficult than Snipes had anticipated.
He later told The Hollywood Reporter,
In the end, Snipes and Marvel teamed up for a less ambitious project: Blade.
"Is that him?"
"Jesus, that's him."
"It's Blade!
It's the daywalker!"
The 1998 film earned over $131 million, becoming Marvel's first real movie success.
Black Panther, meanwhile, was still listed as an upcoming film as late as 2000, with
Variety describing the project as a vehicle for, quote,
In 2008, writer Neil Gaimantold Premiere that he had been interested in creating a film
centered around Doctor Strange.
Gaiman approached director Guillermo del Toro with the concept, and according to Gaiman,
he was interested.
In an interview with Collider, Gaiman explained that while del Toro was on board, the film
was likely around four years from entering production, due to his busy schedule.
"Time is the true enemy of us all.
Time kills everything."
Regarding the project, del Toro told Empire,
Ultimately, Gaiman and del Toro never got to make their version of Doctor Strange.
Marvel wasn't interested in taking on the project, waiting to introduce the Master of
the Mystic Arts to movie audiences until Scott Derrickson's 2016 film starring Benedict Cumberbatch.
In the early '90s, James Cameron convinced Carolco Pictures, who backed Terminator 2:
Judgment Day, to option the film rights for Spider-Man.
But after the company went under, the rights to Spider-Man were purchased by Sony, and
Cameron moved on to other projects.
Like Sam Raimi's 2002 feature, Cameron's Spider-Man would've been an origin story with key changes
to the familiar comics lore.
One notable creation from Cameron's camp was Peter Parker's organic web-shooters, which
would eventually, and controversially, show up in the trilogy that Sony made.
"Is this stuff coming out of you?"
Cameron's script was notably more adult-themed than most takes on the webslinger would end
up being, featuring an abundance of profanity and sexuality, including a sex scene on the
Brooklyn Bridge, and some truly distressing spider-themed foreplay.
After Blade and X-Men got the ball rolling, the next Marvel comic hero to take the world
by storm was Tobey Maguire's Spider-Man.
The film was a huge success, earning more than $821 million.
It sparked one sequel that remains beloved by fans, as well as another sequel that…isn't.
"W.T.F. to that."
Despite the failures of the third Spider-Man, Raimi was ready to set the series right with
a fourth.
Rumors swirled that the follow-up would feature John Malkovich and Anne Hathaway as Vulture
and Black Cat.
But a satisfactory script never materialized, and the project left Raimi's grasp.
As the filmmaker later explained,
Sony had high hopes for its rebooted Spider-Man franchise, but when it comes to critics and
box office, The Amazing Spider-Man movies were anything but.
"Look, look.
Spider-Man is back."
The second Amazing Spider-Man was meant to be followed by a villain-centric movie introducing
the team known as the Sinister Six.
It was slated for release in 2016, with a third Spider-Man movie set to follow two years
later.
Based on the first two movies, it's hard to be disappointed that none of this happened.
After the second movie failed to establish a Spidey cinematic universe, Sony threw in
the towel creatively, and struck a deal with Marvel Studios to get the webslinger in the
MCU.
"I'm Peter, by the way."
"Doctor Strange."
"Oh, we're using our made-up names.
I'm Spider-Man, then."
After the first trilogy of X-Men films, Fox tried to shift the focus from team movies
to individual origins.
But the only mutant to actually get this treatment was Wolverine.
Batman Begins writer David S. Goyer was slated to write and direct a follow-up focusing on
Magneto, but when audiences actually saw how bad the Wolverine movie was, it effectively
killed the brand in one shot.
Though the movie was never made, script drafts suggest a story that would have opened during
Magneto's time as a prisoner in Auschwitz, following him through adulthood as he becomes
something of a Nazi hunter before meeting Charles Xavier.
"This is where your power was born, and this is where your people were slaughtered."
Elements of the story would eventually form the core of X-Men: First Class and its follow-ups,
but on the big screen at least, much of Magneto's story remains untold.
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