Work on the Doctor Doom live-action movie is officially starting, but Disney’s takeover of 21st Century Fox has delayed its release.
TV writer Noah Hawley completed the script, but the project is on the back-burner since Fox owns the rights to the Fantastic Four series, which includes Doctor Victor Von Doom.
Hawley says that he spoke with Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige about the situation and asked him to read the script. However, Feige responded with radio silence.
“I would love to make it,” Hawley says. “Marvel, they’ve got a 25,000-year plan. I just don’t know if I fit in there.”
Despite the let down, Hawley leaked some script details to fans during his featured session at SXSW. He billed the project as a “kind of Cold War, geopolitical movie” based in Latveria, Doctor Doom’s home country. The villain emerges from 10 years of seclusion and invites a female journalist over to share his message to the world.
“Is he a good person or a bad person? We don’t know anything about him,” Hawley explains.
Hawley is focusing on other upcoming projects in the meantime, including the movie Lucy in the Sky premiering this fall. He is also working on a film adaptation of Matthew Baker’s short story To Be Read Backwards. If the Doctor Doom issues weren’t enough, Sony Picture’s hang-ups about the project are delaying its progress, too.
“So I’m trying to figure out where else I can do it,” Hawley says. “If they’re not going to make it, I’m going to make it somewhere. I’d like to make it with them.”
The screenwriter also plans to start filming the TV series Cat’s Cradle, based on the Kurt Vonnegut novel, next year. He is working on Fargo’s fourth season on HBO, along with the final season of the FX Marvel series Legion.
Photo: Marvel
