The six comic book movies Quentin Tarantino could have made
Like many of the industry’s most famed auteurs, Quentin Tarantino has regularly spoken out on the detrimental effect Marvel Studios and superhero cinema in general have been having on the film industry.
Blaming the “Marvelization of Hollywood” for killing the very concept of the movie star, his comments drew a response of disappointment from Chris Hemsworth and one of agreement from Chris Evans, both of whom spent a decade working in the spandex-clad sandbox and became big names as a result.
Tarantino has always been open in denigrating hollow, spectacle-driven, and action-packed movies with little thematic or narrative meat on their bones, which makes it even more interesting that he’s flirted with that exact arena on no less than half a dozen occasions.
Some may have come closer to fruition than others, but the fact remains that at one point or another, the two-time Academy Award winner and staunchly self-sustaining filmmaker has been circling no less than six comic book adaptations at various points throughout his career.
Six comic book movies Quentin Tarantino could have made:
Iron Man
Before it became the launchpad for the Marvel Cinematic Universe and sent Robert Downey Jr‘s rocketing to untold heights, Iron Man spent years bouncing around various studios, failing to be made before Kevin Feige decided that he might as well do it himself as the head of an upstart production company.
The rights drifted from Universal to 20th Century Fox and then onto New Line Cinema before they ended up back in the hands of Marvel, a period where countless potential stars and prospective filmmakers were courted for the project that would eventually shift the paradigm of blockbuster cinema.
Tarantino was one of many names floated as a potential writer and director, but it never seemed to get any further than the wishful thinking stage. Still, he’s a friend and collaborator of Timothy Olyphant – who was considered a front-runner for the title role before Downey Jr blew everyone away – and imagining the filmmaker getting to grips with a self-styled ‘genius billionaire playboy philanthropist’ who moonlights as an armoured superhero is mouth-watering stuff.
Green Lantern
Before it became one of the biggest box office bombs in history and a movie Ryan Reynolds would spend the rest of his life trashing anytime the opportunity presented itself, Green Lantern spent a long time lodged firmly in the deepest, darkest bowels of development hell.
In an interview with MTV, Tarantino shared that his interest had been gauged on helming the cosmic comic book caper. “I was offered Green Lantern,” he admitted. “Not since it’s been a script, but just like, ‘Hey, we own Green Lantern, would you like it?'” Although he said, “this would be the genre I’d want to specialise in,” when he was younger, he was more focused on creating his own stories.
Jack Black ended up attached to the title role in another iteration, which presents the fascinating what-if scenario of the madcap comic powerhouse and Tarantino teaming up on a spacefaring superhero epic, which could have been one of the weirdest things to ever happen to the genre.
Silver Surfer
There’s a Silver Surfer poster seen hanging on the wall of Mr Orange’s apartment in Reservoir Dogs, with Tarantino taking his fandom to the next level by writing a script for a potential solo movie for the character not long after his debut feature was released.
The filmmaker pitched the intergalactic adventure to production company Constantin Films, which was reportedly close to 500 pages long and written in what was soon to be Tarantino’s signature long-form style of crafting his screenplays, only for the outfit to show a complete lack of interest.
Any plans for a Silver Surfer flick were abandoned entirely when the cost and primitive nature of the visual effects required rendered it troublesome to the point of pointlessness. The popular character having only made one live-action appearance to date in 2007’s Fantastic Four sequel bearing his name.
Sgt. Rock
Hardly one of the crown jewels in a DC Comics crown that contains Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman as its shining lights, Tarantino was suitably enamoured by the prospect of adapting Sgt. Rock made a point of praising the screenplay.
Oscar-nominated Blade Runner, Unforgiven, and Seven scribe David Webb Peoples penned the potential World War II set comic book blockbuster, which Warner Bros offered Tarantino’s way in the post-Death Proof period. He didn’t do it, but it stuck in the memory regardless.
“There’s a really good script that David Webb Peoples wrote for Sgt. Rock that I still think about doing that from time to time,” he told The Big Picture. “I don’t think I will, but I think it’s a really magnificent script, and I would do a good job with.”
Luke Cage
A huge fan of Marvel‘s Harlem-dwelling hero, Tarantino met with producer and rights-holder Ed Pressman about a Luke Cage movie, where the former even suggested Laurence Fishburne as the ideal candidate to play the lead.
His admiration of the source material came from “Marvel’s attempt to try to do a blaxploitation movie vibe as one of their superhero comics,” which means it’s not out of the question to assume Tarantino was planning on making a blaxploitation-style street-level superhero film with Fishburne as Cage, which sounds incredible.
Not that he regretted missing out, though, after Tarantino confirmed he’d “ended up doing Pulp Fiction instead” of chasing Luke Cage. He thinks he “might have made the right choice,” and looking at the impact his second feature had on cinema, it’s hard to disagree.
Django/Zorro
There were initially plans afoot for Django Unchained to get a sequel, but once Jamie Foxx’s bounty hunter was removed from the story, it eventually made it to the screen under the guise of The Hateful Eight.
That being said, Django did return on the printed page through a comic book crossover that saw him partner up with legendary masked outlaw Zorro, which was swiftly announced for the live-action treatment with Tarantino co-writing the script alongside Jerrod Carmichael.
That’s about as far along as it managed to get after the director decided to focus on narrowing his scope in the build-up to his tenth and purportedly final feature The Movie Critic, noting how “the idea of a smaller audience almost all the way around is appealing to me” to a much greater extent than pairing up a pair of legendary outlaws.
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