Ben Wheatley – the British film and TV director that helmed High-Rise, Sightseers, Free Fire and Peter Capaldi’s first episode as the lead in Doctor Who – is reportedly being tapped for “one of the big Marvel films”. With the mixture of horror, action and family fun on his C.V., Wheatley seems like a really exciting choice for a huge comic book film.
This sizeable Hollywood rumour stems from the least likely of sources: Bob Mortimer, who was chatting on Adam Buxton’s podcast about an indie film that he was meant to be making with Wheatley. Mortimer may have put his foot in it and revealed a studio secret when he said this:
“We were about to start that but then Ben got offered one of the big Marvel films, so it weren’t for us to say, ‘you ain’t doing that Ben.’”
It’s unclear if it was Marvel Studios (who make the Avengers films), Fox (who still have the rights to the X-Men at the time of writing) or Sony (who are building a universe around Spider-Man’s supporting characters with films like Venom) that reached out to Wheatley about a Marvel Comics-inspired project.
Speaking to Little White Lies a while ago, Wheatley was asked if he would ever make a Marvel movie. This is what he said:
“I don’t really know how those things work. ‘Marvel Zombies’ hasn’t been done which is what I’m interested in. Maybe that’s a bit too niche. Marvel’s interesting in that it’s kind of a hybrid of cinema and television. A very, very expensive TV show that you buy a pass for every three months.”
It remains to be seen if it was Wheatley’s comments about Marvel Zombies – a comic book series where a zombie virus invades the Marvel Universe – that put him on the radar of Hollywood’s superhero studios. As it stands, Mortimer’s comments are all we have to go on, but we’ll let you know as more news comes to light.