Joe Carnahan Reflects On Planned DAREDEVIL Trilogy And How NEMESIS "F*cks With The Genre"
Before the rights to Daredevil reverted back to Marvel Studios, The Grey director Joe Carnahan was attached to direct a reboot for Twentieth Century Fox. Here, he discusses both that, and his take on Mark Millar and Steve McNiven's Nemesis. Is it still happening? Read on for details!
After refusing to trade Fantastic Four characters Silver Surfer and Galactus to Marvel for Daredevil, Twentieth Century Fox had to let the rights revert for the Man Without Fear back in 2012. Just before that happened, Joe Carnahan was attached to direct a reboot of the franchise, and as we already known from the sizzle reel which found its way online shortly after, his take on the iconic Marvel character would have been very unique and clearly Frank Miller inspired. As it turns out, the filmmaker had plans for Daredevil across three movies in three different time periods.
"What people don’t realize about the DD project is that the producers of the film, got to me very late. They had a script that I read and I thought that while the action was wonderful, the story didn’t really have any additional bite. There was nothing I suggested a trilogy as follows. ‘Daredevil ‘73’ ‘Daredevil ‘79’ and ‘Daredevil ‘85’ where I was going to do a kind of ‘cultural libretto’ and make the music of those eras a kind of thematic arc . So the first one would be Classic Rock, the second one would be Punk Rock and the third film would be ‘New Wave.’ The problem was, the option was almost set to lapse so we made an eleventh hour bid to Marvel to retain the rights for a bit longer so I could rework the script. Unfortunately, it just didn’t happen. Marvel wanted the rights back. I don’t blame them."
Daredevil has of course now found a home at Netflix with The Cabin in the Woods and Sinister Six writer and director attached. As for another comic book movie which may be in Carnahan's future, he provided an update on Nemesis which doesn't exactly clear up whether or not we'll see the violent Mark Millar and Steve McNiven series brought to the big screen.
"I think the biggest challenge with Nemesis is that it’s just a motherf***er of screenplay in that it pushes a lot of buttons and does things that both expand and violate the traditional mores of the ‘comic book adaptation’ and that’s a scary conceit when The Dark Knight is considered the socio-political lynchpin of that particular universe. I think Nemesis f**ks with the genre in such a thumb-in-the-eye fashion that it might simply be something for another time and place. It’s incredibly topical and remains infuriatingly so. I chalk it up to another really wonderful script that my brother and I wrote that simply may be too smart-assed for its own good. My brother and I took our real inspiration from Nemesis in the fact that only one character, the bad guy, wore a costume. From their it deviates from the source material in a number of ways but what remains alive and well is Millar’s simmering disdain for the status quo and the relentless violence that characterizes the graphic novel."
So, while the screenplay is indeed completed, it doesn't sound as if we're going to see it anytime soon. The comic book series was incredibly popular, and with Carnahan seemingly conforming that the villain does wear the suit in his take, it's extremely frustrating to think Nemesis hasn't been given the green light based on these comments! What do you guys think?
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