A new report has revealed some details of the chaotic goings-on behind closed doors at Marvel Studios as the company tries to regain some momentum.
You don’t need us to tell you that Marvel is in a rut right now. After all, it’s been the topic of conversation since the early part of this year and, apart from the odd success, the studio has struggled to put out entertainment with the same golden touch that made it the envy of other studios for the best part of a decade.
With things not quite being right onscreen, it stands to reason that things probably aren’t quite right behind the scenes either. Earlier this week we covered a story that the company pushed its VFX team beyond reasonable limits, while earlier this month it was revealed that the studio has scrapped its half-filmed Daredevil show and is looking to entirely change the way it does scripted TV.
In a rather remarkable report, Variety has published a series of claims that lay bare just how chaotic things are at Marvel Studios as the company seeks to right the ship after a torrid year. The star of the long-gestating Blade film, Mahershala Ali, is said to have nearly exited the project due to frustrations over the studio’s inability to produce a decent script. So far, we’ve seen five different writers hired to crack the screenplay, not to mention two different directors and a shutdown just weeks before cameras were set to roll.
A source for the outlet claims that at one point, the story “morphed into a narrative led by women and filled with life lessons” and Blade was “relegated to the fourth lead”. We’re not here to poke holes in films that don’t even exist, but if that claim is true, diminishing the character’s status in that way seems like an odd choice.
Logan and Blade Runner 2049 writer Michael Green is the latest writer to take a crack at the script, confirming the stories that were circulating earlier this month that Marvel were looking for yet another writer to try to get a script that can see production finally ramp up.
The story has plenty of other claims too, including that the studio is so desperate to reclaim former glories that it is looking at bringing back the original Avengers cast, even if a couple of them are (in storyline) dead and another is (also in storyline) about a million years old. There are also reports that Marvel was considering abandoning the Kang storyline which is set to dominate the next few years of its output because of Jonathan Majors’ legal troubles.
There’s a lot to digest and we recommend checking it out. The story paints a picture of a company desperately trying to figure out which direction to move in. Time will tell if Marvel can rediscover its golden touch but the studio’s next film, The Marvels is set to hit cinemas on the 10th November, and will undoubtedly kick off a whole new wave of discussion.
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