Hollywood is a living beast that is constantly course-correcting its path towards the next blockbuster. In its wild run for the next cultural gold mine, projects change hands, producers abandon scripts, and even directors get relocated from one film to another. While this process is normal, sometimes we can wonder what would have happened if some curious productions had seen the light of day. And while What If..? makes us ponder the question of how different the Marvel Cinematic Universe could look, we are also left to wonder how superhero history could be completely different if a few Marvel productions had left the paper.
In our real-life What If...? exercise, we’ll discuss five of the most curious Marvel projects never made — but that we wish had been. The five projects come from the minds of great filmmakers, writers, artists, and while they might sound like guaranteed successes, each of them was disposed of by the Hollywood beast for some reason. But what if there’s a universe out there where the stars aligned and Quentin Tarantino produced his Luke Cage script? And how would Guillermo del Toro shoot a Doctor Strange film? It’s time to dive into the Multiverse of possibilities and imagine what could come of five curious Marvel projects that never got into production.
David S. Goyer’s ‘Venom’
Back in 2016, when Sony announced it was producing Venom without Spider-Man, many fans wondered how could the iconic villain even exist without the hero that defined him. However, the concept was not new, as David S. Goyer had already written a script for a solo Venom in the ‘90s. In 1997, Goyer’s Venom was in production on New Line Cinema, with Dolph Lundgren in discussion to play the antihero. Little is known why the project was canceled, but soon after Venom was shelved, the character’s rights moved from New Line Cinema to Sony, which in turn led to Topher Grace’s version of Venom in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 3. That is indeed a sad ending to a promising story.
To put things into perspective, Goyer wrote Man of Steel and co-wrote Batman v Superman, the two movies that made the Snyderverse possible. Goyer also developed the story for Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy. Most importantly, Goyer wrote the Blade trilogy, some of the most fantastic superhero movies of all time, R-rated and with a Black protagonist decades before Hollywood started to discuss representation seriously. So, how extraordinary could Goyer’s Venom be? While there’s not much official information about the project, Goyer’s original script can still be found in dark corners of the internet, and it teases Carnage as the main villain. Marvel could have a gritty and dark universe of antiheroes in the ‘90s, long before the MCU was a thing. Unfortunately, in our sad reality, this Venom was canceled.
Quentin Tarantino's ‘Luke Cage, Hero for Hire’
With Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, and Django Unchained being what they are, we can say that Quentin Tarantino loves blaxploitation cinema. What Tarantino also loves are comic books, in particular Luke Cage stories. It’s easy to understand, then, how once upon a time in Hollywood, Tarantino contemplated the idea of producing Luke Cage, Hero for Hire. After the success of 1992’s Reservoir Dogs, Tarantino discussed the Luke Cage film with producer Ed Pressman, who owned the character’s rights at the time. Tarantino even approached Laurence Fishburne to play the hero, an idea that the star found interesting. So why didn’t this project move forward then? Well, simply because Tarantino decided to work on Pulp Fiction.
While we are all grateful for the existence of Pulp Fiction, Tarantino’s Luke Cage project could have open the doors to different kinds of superhero adaptations. Luke Cage, a.k.a. Power Man, was created to echo the blaxploitation success on comic books, so a movie adaptation that used Tarantino’s aesthetics would be something wonderful to see. Besides that, Tarantino’s taste for some ultra-violence could have made Luke Cage the first R-rated superhero movie ever!
Neil Gaiman’s and Guillermo del Toro’s ‘Doctor Strange’
While Benedict Cumberbatch is an outstanding actor, so far, his MCU version of the Sorcerer Supreme is not as psychedelic or mystical as fans of comic books might like. Imagine what Doctor Strange could have been, then, if the master of dark fantasy Guillermo del Toro had directed it. Even better, imagine that literary genius Neil Gaiman had written Doctor Strange’s script. That could have happened in 2007 when del Toro himself pitched the idea to Marvel and got refused. Gaiman was disappointed he never could work on this project, and to be honest, we all are.
Gaiman has a lot of experience as a comic book writer, and his Sandman series is still one of the most stunning works ever done with the medium. On the other hand, del Toro has a keen eye for practical effects that help bring to life fantasy universes filled with magic. The talent of the two artists combined could have resulted in one of the most visually impressive superhero adaptations of all time. Both artists also have a lot of experience making even the most incredible narrative feel human and grounded, something the MCU often lacks. We do hope the Time Stone exists because this is a past error we would love to fix.
James Cameron & Kathryn Bigelow's ‘Wolverine and the X-Men’
In the late ‘80s, comic book writer Chris Claremont started to work on an ambitious film adaption of the X-Men led by the Canadian mutant Wolverine. Claremont is the visionary who wrote the Dark Phoenix saga and helmed the “Uncanny X-Men” comic book series for 17 wonderful years. His X-Men adaptation would have been as ambitious as his writing career. With the help of legend Stan Lee, Claremont presented the project to The Terminator director James Cameron. Cameron was interested in producing, while his then-wife Kathryn Bigelow was set to direct. The script? Well, it was supposed to be written by Aliens screenwriter Gary Goldman. There were even some stars attached to the project, with Angela Bassett set to play Storm and Bob Hoskins set to play a comic-accurate Wolverine. Named Wolverine and the X-Men, the project never moved forward due to a fateful discussion between Lee and Cameron about Spider-Man.
Since Cameron is a big fan of the Web Crawler, just like Lee, the two started to discuss the possibility of making a Spider-Man adaptation during a meeting set to discuss Wolverine and the X-Men. During this meeting, Claremont saw his dreams dissolve before his eyes, as the X-Men project he crafted with so much care was swiped under the rug. James Cameron R-rated Spider-Man movie also never came to be, making Claremont’s story even more tragic. Although both X-Men and Spider-Man would become successful film franchises in the hands of Bryan Singer and Sam Raimi, respectively, we’ll always wonder how Claremont’s envisioned Wolverine and the X-Men would look like.
Angela Bowie’s ‘Daredevil and Black Widow’
Netflix’s Daredevil is one of the best gifts any Marvel fan could have received. However, the journey to adapt the Man Without Fear for television started in 1975 when David Bowie’s then-wife Angela Bowie acquired the rights of both Daredevil and Black Widow. The series went into pre-production, with a photo shooting featuring Angela Bowie as Natasha Romanoff and Ben Carruthers as Matt Murdock. The duo shows up in reimagined versions of Marvel’s superheroes uniforms in these amazing photos, created by Angela Bowie’s husband's Ziggy Stardust era costume designer Natasha Kornikoff.
People might wonder why a blind lawyer would team up with a Russian spy to face criminals, but the real question is why no one scratched their wallet to make this show real. Angela Bowie knocked on some television studios’ doors with concept photos in hand, but no one seemed interested in picking up the project. So, after a year, she lost the rights of the characters and moved on with her life. And we are left here, imagining a Daredevil and Black Window series with an original soundtrack by David Bowie himself. And to think there might be an alternate timeline where this show actually exists breaks our hearts. The Multiverse can be cruel sometimes.