'Legion' Creator Noah Hawley Envisions His Doctor Doom Movie as Political Thriller
Doctor Doom is getting political.
"Legion" and "Fargo" showrunner Noah Hawley is developing a movie centered on Doctor Doom, the "Fantastic Four" villain. And while he is a very busy man (Season 2 of "Legion" premieres April, he's already got an idea for as-yet-unordered "Fargo" Season 4), Hawley has a take on how he'd approach the character and film.
He told 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?"
Hmm, sounds like Hawley wants to focus on Doctor Doom as leader of the fictional Latveria, just as "Black Panther" did with T'Challa and Wakanda. Hey, it worked for that movie. And of course, both are based on Marvel comics.
In fact, Hawley hat-tipped another Marvel movie while discussing his Doctor Doom angle.
"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," he said.
"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."
Of course, the future of a Doctor Doom movie as well as the "X-Men" franchise is up in the air after Disney's acquisition of 20th Century Fox. If the deal goes through, the rights to those characters will be held by the same company that owns Marvel.