After scripting Iron Man 3, Drew Pearce reunites with Ben Kingsley as he takes on writing and directing duties on the latest Marvel One-Shot All Hail the King, which is included as a bonus feature on the home entertainment release of Thor: The Dark World and sees Kingsley reprising the role of The Mandarin, or rather Trevor Slattery. During an interview with Total Film to promote the short, Pearce has spoken about other Marvel One-Shots that he’d written prior to All Hail the King:
“[I’d written] lots of them. One that was Sin and Crossbones (from Captain America: The Winter Soldier). I love Jessica Jones, and while obviously Jessica Jones and Alias is NOW going to exist in the Netflix part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), I’d always obsessively been trying to put her in stuff I’d been working with Marvel on… but about three or four other ones, too. My Marvel obsession with Damage Control is still there… but it’s pretty difficult to make into a short. The clue is in the title that you have to do a lot of damage to then control it – and that’s not really in the budget of a short movie. I just think it’s got huge potential as a franchise.”
Pearce also gave an update on his first script for Marvel, an adaptation of Runaways, which got him the job writing Iron Man 3, despite seemingly being shelved by the studio:
“I wish I knew if The Runaways had a place in Phase 3. I’m not close enough to the core. I don’t work for Marvel, so I don’t have a sense of the Master Plan other than when tiny crumbs are passed to me! I’m still super-proud of the script. I think it’s a brilliant film in the making – not necessarily because of my script, but because of Brian K Vaughan’s excellent idea. I know Kevin’s still a big fan of the script that’s there in the vault. Whether it finds its way onto the runway for Phase 3, I have no idea, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed. Honestly, telling the first arc of that story is the key to that story. I also think that one of the things that would make it so unique in the universe, and also a better movie in the MCU – if we made it now rather than four years ago – is that it could now be part of this tapestry where people are becoming aware of superheroes inside of the MCU. Which is what makes the comics so fun. But I think at its fundament, it’s a reverse twist on the Spider-Man theme that ‘With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility’, because it’s actually a movie where that relates to the parents and not the kids, and I’ve never seen a movie that does that, superhero or otherwise. The realisation that your parents are fallible people, being heightened immeasurably by the fact that they’re superpowered people who are using their superpowers for evil and not good. I just think it’s the most potent idea and the script that exists at the moment takes an almost grandiose – almost Godfather-esque view of the crime syndicate. I just think it’s so rich as an idea. It’s just not as obvious as a single male superhero character, it’s not as marketable, and I think that’ll always be a hurdle with it.”
Would you like to see Runaways joining Marvel’s Phase Three line-up? Let us know in the comments below….
Originally published February 6, 2014. Updated April 11, 2018.
