Doug Liman Explains Why He Ultimately Walked Away From GAMBIT & JUSTICE LEAGUE DARK - EXCLUSIVE

Shortly after the critical success of Edge of Tomorrow, director Doug Liman signed on to helm Channing Tatum's long-gestating Gambit solo movie for 20th Century Fox, which ultimately didn't pan out.

He departed the spinoff within a year, and was then (briefly) attached to direct the Justice League Dark-centric Dark Universe for Warner Bros., but that didn't materialize either, so he moved on to new original film and tv projects.

While much has been said about why he may have decided to leave these projects, we recently caught up with Liman ahead of the second season premiere of his show Impulse to learn more about what led to him stepping away, and it sounds like it was indeed the lack of a strong script.

ROHAN: With Jumper and Impulse, you’ve been able to explore the superhero genre in ways that traditional comic book movies typically don’t get to, but you were also attached to a pair of comic book movies a few years ago with Justice League Dark and also Gambit.

Could you maybe talk about what it was that ultimately led you to walk away from those projects?

DOUG: It's always about the script. Getting a great script is so hard, especially for an action script because - and especially for the movies I want to make - I want to be completely original and yet still be commercially satisfying and usually the commercially satisfying ideas are things that people have seen before, like if someone already discovered that and that's why it shows up in movie after movie.

So, if you’re trying to be like, “Okay, I'm going to do a superhero thing,” and there's been umpteen movies and TV shows about superpowers and I want to do something that's totally unique with Impulse, you know, a lot of the good ideas are already done and you've got to find your own lane. You don't have to, but for me, that's so important. I'm not interested in doing something that's derivative of someone else's work and so, it makes it particularly hard to develop material that can accomplish that. There's a lot of times you end up with a script that is really original, but it's not all that satisfying or you have something that’s pretty satisfying, but it doesn’t feel original.

Check out our full interview with director/producer Doug Liman by heading HERE!

 

In the upcoming second season of Impulse, “Henry” Coles life suddenly changes when a traumatic event awakens within her a dangerous ability beyond her understanding and control: teleportation. With the help of her friends, Henry struggles to unravel the mystery of her powers. But they aren’t the only ones who have taken an interest in Henry’s situation, and the closer they come to the truth, the more dangerous things become. Can Henry keep her powers a secret, or will unlocking the truth mean endangering the people she loves?