Writer Drew Pearce has quickly moved up the ladder to become of the most sought after scribes for comic fare. Pearce broke out as the producer/writer of the British superhero comedy “No Heroics” and has since landed a couple of high profile gigs, co-writing “Iron Man 3” with director Shane Black and penning the DC Comic “The Mighty” for Paramount. But before both of these, Pearce had readied a script for “The Runaways,” a Marvel movie that was gearing up to shoot last year with Peter Sollet (“Raising Victor Vargas,” “Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist”) directing before being taken off the slate in the fall. It seems two superhero team-up movies were a bit much for Marvel to take on all at once.
In case you’re not familiar with comic, created by “Lost” writer Brian K. Vaughan and Adrian Alphona, “The Runaways” follows five L.A. teenagers who discover their parents are actually a group of supervillains, The Pride, who control the Californian criminal underworld. Discovering their own special abilities, they go on the run and work to bring down their parents. We sat in on screenwriting panel with Noel Clarke, Stuart Hazeldine, Jeremy Drysdale and Pearce, and the latter revealed “The Runaways” is just awaiting a signal from Marvel to move ahead.
“Basically, ‘The Avengers‘ came along and everything else at Marvel got put on hold for a year. But the script is there, we’re good go,” Pearce said. “It’s kind of like [being] at the airport when you’re waiting for your slot to take off with Marvel, and we’re hoping we get a slot next year. Fingers crossed. They’re very happy with it, so hopefully it happens.”
Marvel has seen a bit of movement lately on a number of their second-tier titles such as “Ant-Man,” “Guardians Of The Galaxy” and “Dr. Strange” so it remains to be seen where “The Runaways” is on the priority list. The studio recently pegged two release dates — May 16, 2014 and June 27, 2014 — for two yet to be announced films. Could one of them go to “The Runaways” or the other aforementioned projects? Guess we’ll have to wait and see. But with D23 just around corner, a bunch of Marvel announcements are likely to arrive so stay tuned. No word yet on if Sollett is still attached to direct.
