After three great seasons of “Fargo,” we are keeping our eye on any project that writer Noah Hawley gets his hands on. That includes the (possible) upcoming “Doctor Doom” solo film, based on the famous Marvel villain seen recently in “Fantastic Four.” However, even though Hawley is an incredible talent, there’s a lot of questions about the ‘Doom’ film, especially considering that 2015’s “Fantastic Four” reboot completely bombed at the box office.
In an interview with the Observer, Hawley talked about his plans for the upcoming villain-focused film and how it fits into the larger “Fantastic Four” universe. First, and foremost, what does a “Doctor Doom” movie even look like?
“As with ‘Legion,’ my thought was that the [superhero] genre has a certain kind of movie covered, but what else can the genre do,” Hawley said. “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?”
He goes on to explain how the tone is something that comic book film fans might have already seen before, in a popular Marvel Studios film, and that there’s no need to reboot the “Fantastic Four” yet again.
“It’s something that ‘[Captain America] 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,” he explained. “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?”
With this explanation, it sounds like Hawley has the idea for a pretty great political thriller, but it still doesn’t shed light on just how a “Doctor Doom” film will deal with a lack of “Fantastic Four.” This is a similar question that fans always ask about the upcoming “Venom” movie from Sony, which is going to be disregarding any connection to “Spider-Man.” Sure, it could work, but we still need some more information before we can make a judgement.