Superman director and DC Studios co-CEO James Gunn has prompted speculation that there might finally be some movement on the long-awaited DCU Swamp Thing reboot.
Gunn shared some artwork - the cover to the first volume of Alan Moore's Saga of the Swamp Thing - to his Instagram stories. The filmmaker does post a lot of DC-related imagery on social media, but the Swamp Thing art coming directly after last night's Supergirl TV spot and poster seems particularly random (it's worth noting that Gunn's image links to a collection of Michael Zulli's artwork).
Logan and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny director James Mangold is still attached to helm the movie, but Gunn revealed that the filmmaker has yet to turn in a script late last year. Soon after, we got word that Mangold had signed an overall deal with Paramount Pictures to “develop, direct, and produce feature film projects” for the studio, which was recently acquired by Skydance.
Somewhat surprisingly, Gizmodo followed up by claiming that Mangold “remains attached and available to develop all his other projects.”
Gunn was later asked if Mangold's Paramount deal meant that Swamp Thing was now "dead" during an interview with Rolling Stone.
"No, no, it doesn’t. No," Gunn responded, before noting that he still hopes to see Swamp Thing become a reality at some point. "Yeah, I mean, yeah, totally. Absolutely. Yeah. We’ve talked to him. He’s still invested. So we’ll see. Some things take a long time. We’ll see what happens."
Mangold has previously shared a few intriguing details on his plans for the character, while also explaining why he decided to make himself available for this particular project.
“As soon as I heard James Gunn was taking over DC, I just saw it as an opportunity to throw my hat down.”
Mangold also said that his take on the classic DC Comics character will be inspired by Frankenstein, and although Gunn has previously stated that the movie will “investigate the dark origins of Swamp Thing” with a "much more horrific" story, the director clarified that he is "not specifically" targeting an R-rating.
"While I'm sure DC views Swamp Thing as a franchise, I would be viewing it as a very simple, clean, Gothic horror movie about this man/monster," said Mangold. "Just doing my own thing with this, just a standalone."
"I've been afforded the chance [to work] in different genres, because people will finance it. If I was just a horror director and people only wanted to pay for my horror movies, that would be a different problem," the director later acknowledged. "But part of the joy is that you learn a lot when you are changing genres or the vernacular in some of the way you communicate in your art."
Do you think Gunn is teasing something here, or are people reading too much into his post?