James McTeigue On Comic Book Rumors: Plastic Man Probably Won’t Ever Happen, Won’t Confirm Or Deny Superman Reboot
Later this week we’ll be publishing our full interview with directorJamesMcTeigue(V For Vendetta, Ninja Assassin), but until then I’ve been posting some of the more newsworthy bits to come out of our discussion. Yesterday,McTeiguerevealed his next project, aSe7en-stlyethriller titledThe Raven, and he gave us an update on the development of the sci-fiadaptationAltered Carbon. You can read about both projectsin our previous post.
James also took the time to address threecomic bookmovie related rumors that have been circulating theinterwebsrecently, includingPlastic Man, X-Men Origins: Magnetoand aSupermanreboot. Rumors debunked and quotes after the jump.
A project that has long been rumored is a big screen adaptation ofPlastic Man.TheWachowskiBrotherswrote a screenplay based on the comic book in the mid-1990’s, beforeThe Matrixtook off. However, recently anAICNreport sparked rumors that Plastic Man might be next project for theWachowskis, withMcTeigueproviding second unit support, or possibly directing theWachowski-produced project himself.McTeiguesays that NOT ONLY ARE the rumors not true, but he doesn’t believePlastic Manwill ever hit the big screen.
“Obviously, Larry and Andy, did a script forPlastic Manback in the day. I’ll be very surprised if that movie gets made. We haven’t ever really talked about it. But I know it’s still a Joel [Silver] property or a Warner property…”
In May it was rumored thatMcTeiguewas in talks to replaceDavidGoyeronX-Men Origins: Magneto. TheIMDbpage for the film even started listingMcTeigueas “in talks” for the project. But when I asked James about the project, he joked “I think that DavidGoyerwould be surprised about that actually.”
“[Magneto] was just one of those rumors that started out and I don’t know where it came from or how it came up.”
Then the filmmaker paused for a second before admitting, “I mean, you know, it’s not a bad idea.”
Last weekIESBreported a rumor that Warner Bros and DC Comics were in talks with Andy and LarryWachowskito produce aSupermanreboot directed byMcTeigue. I asked James if there was any truth to the rumors what-so ever, and he laughed kinda nervously, and paused for a second, before giving me an interesting non answer:
“You know… I… I would say… I’ll keep you guessing, actually. It’s good not to dispel every rumor, right?”
James had been so forthcoming on previous questions, and quick to deny false rumors. I hate to read too much into his answer (or as it may be, his non-answer) but his hesitation seems to suggest there might be something to it. Maybe there have been some early talks, or possibly it is something theWachowskiBrothers are developing. But the non denial seems rather odd, especially coming off of denials on a handful of other rumored projects.
