With poor box office predictions for “The Marvels,” the Marvel TV reckoning, and the ongoing “crisis at Marvel,” it’s clear that the most lucrative studio in Hollywood history has hit a rough patch creatively and otherwise. So where does Marvel Studios go from here? Will they keep Jonathan Majors’ Kang the Conquerer as the “big bad” for the next two Phases of MCU films? Will they bring back old Avenger favorites like Scarlett Johansson and Robert Downey Jr.? Or will Kevin Feige & co. take their product’s recent downward trend in stride and accept that their time as a cultural and commercial behemoth is beginning to end?
Promoting his directorial work on the “John Wick” spin-off series, “The Continental,” Albert Hughes weighed in on the Marvel situation in a new sit-down with the “Happy Sad Confused” podcast, revealing, circuitously, that he had talks with Marvel Studios about working on “Blade.” For one, Hughes, just to be clear, doesn’t name “Blade” by name, but when the host played a, hmm, does his mystery Marvel project “rhyme with Glade,” the director essentially confirmed, yes, this was the film he was dancing around.
So why did Hughes decide to walk away from an opportunity to work with Marvel Studios? In short, Hughes knew that would “implode” working in an atmosphere like Marvel’s. And as far as Hughes is concerned, Marvel’s recent woes partially stem from the studio being a “bad situation” for veteran filmmakers like him. Hughes understands why the “kind of controlled nature of” Marvel Studios may appeal to “up-and-comers,” but it’s not somewhere where the individual creativity of a veteran necessarily shines through. And he believes changing that environment may be a partial antidote for Marvel’s current crisis.
Hughes explained that he did a “deep dive” on all of Marvel’s movies when he was in early talks to work on his project. That included him creating an in-depth chart detailing everything about the MCU, from box office success to title sequences to each film’s special effects. “I’ve been in talks with the obvious studio about superhero movies a couple of times, but I always felt uncomfortable because I knew it was a system,” Hughes started. “And they’re very nice, and I went through a long process. In fact, I broke down all their movies and put them in a spreadsheet and broke down the box office, watching the title scores, where the VFX ranks, I had to do a deep dive on them.”
But Hughes soon realized he wouldn’t be able to work within the studio’s format. “And I got, halfway, not very close, halfway through the process, and I go, ‘No, I would implode from the kind of controlled nature of that world and not being able to do what I do.’ And I don’t understand why a real filmmaker would want to be in that system. I understand why up-and-comers would, which they do a good job of. finding people at the right time. But I think I would implode.” “And there was one character that I was interested in, all of the others I really wasn’t,” Hughes continued, hinting at his interest in “Blade.” But the director eventually realized he couldn’t work in Marvel’s creative format. “No, it’s a bad situation,” he went on. “You never want to be somewhere you’re not truly wanted. You’re not truly wanted for what you do.”
It ultimately came down to Marvel’s inability to make an important distinction regarding him for Hughes to walk away. “I think there’s a thing that’s rarely talked about in Hollywood: there’s a difference between a director and a filmmaker,” he explained. “A filmmaker, it’s all-encompassing what they’re touching on their film; that’s a filmmaker to me. And a producer can be a filmmaker, too; a cameraman is a filmmaker, a rockstar cameraman. A director is one who just calls action and leaves and checks in on the editing every once in a while.” Hughes wanted Marvel to hire him for his singular talents, not just to fill in for a gig. “So if you’re getting hired for you, and what you do and what you bring, I’ve been in a situation more recently where I’m getting poked and prodded, and it’s like, ‘Oh, you don’t really want what I do,’” Hughes said. “That was checking a box for them, and this is not going to work out. And it didn’t work out; I had to quit that job. I smelled it pretty early, and I said, ‘No, I’m not here for this.’”
But Hughes also acknowledged that while the set-up at Marvel Studios isn’t for him, it’s super-successful nonetheless. “Well, this came out of ‘know who your daddy is,’” Hughes said about his in-depth Marvel spreadsheet. “Your daddy has never failed: the producer who does this [pointing at a chart] is the most successful producer in Hollywood history with the most successful studio in Hollywood history. So if I’m walking into that, I have to drop my ego and go, ‘Are you ready for this?’ Like, that’s Daddy, and Daddy’s gonna have some wants. So that was a process I had to go through.”
And Hughes isn’t the only one to pass on “Blade.” The entire project remains problematic for Marvel, with the film’s script reportedly in its sixth iteration and star Mahershala Ali looking to exit. French director Yann Demange is still attached to direct, but he already took over after Bassam Tariq exited the film last year. So Hughes trusting his gut about “Blade” may be the right call for him after all.
