Last summer during the San Diego Comic-Con, it was announced that Legion creator Noah Hawley would be taking on the reins of a Doctor Doom solo movie for 20th Century Fox.
Despite the impending Fox acquisition by Disney, Hawley has confirmed that he remains in development on the project, and now he’s shed a little light on his plans and his influences during an interview with The Observer.
“As with Legion, my thought was that the [superhero] genre has a certain kind of movie covered, but what else can the genre do. What’s interesting to me about Doom’s character is he’s the king of an Eastern European country and is there a version of this that is more of a political thriller that mixes genre?
“It’s something that Captain America: The Winter Soldier did really well, which was kind of make a Cold War thriller movie out of a superhero movie. This is different than that, but it does have this idea of, and I don’t want to say too much about it, but it is a mixture of genres.
“The mandate is not to re-launch the Fantastic Four franchise as much as it is to take this fascinating and under-served character and really build a movie about him where we ask the question: Is he a hero? Is he a villain? What does he really want? We’re able to explore these questions in a serious way.”
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Hawley was also asked whether the Disney acquisition of Fox will have any impact on his X-Men series Legion. As with his earlier comments on the Doctor Doom movie, as far as he is concerned it is business as usual until he hears otherwise:
“That’s not clear to me yet. I haven’t had any larger Marvel-based conversations about if they have plans for the X-Men universe or if they have plans for their other Fox-controlled comic properties. I would have to imagine there’s a plan in a drawer somewhere, but as long as the show is making noise and is watched by people, I won’t be worried that they’re going to cancel Legion because it doesn’t fit in with their larger brand. But, who knows, I haven’t had those conversations.”
The second season of Legion is set to premiere on FX in April.
