At the conclusion of the San Diego Comic Con panel for FX's Legion, series creator Noah Hawley dropped some unexpected but fantastic news: he's writing a Doctor Doom movie for 20th Century Fox. The Hollywood Reporter reports he's even in the running to possibly direct the film. Hawley is a rising star and hot commodity right now, with two critically acclaimed hits on the FX channel, Fargo, based on the Coen Bros. film, and Legion, his visually spectacular, head-trippy immersion into untold facets of FOX's X-Men universe.
Naturally, Hawley naming dropping Doctor Doom instantly ignites interest in FOX's moribund Fantastic Four franchise. 2015 was the last time the first family of Marvel Comics graced the big screen. Director Josh Trank's Fantastic Four, starring Miles Teller, Kate Mara, Jamie Bell, Michael B. Jordan, and Tobey Kebbell was a dismal failure critically, at the box office, and creatively. Trank attempted to meld Marvel's science fiction superheroes into the body horror genre, but backstage drama during the production led to the film being taken away from Trank and recut by producer Simon Kinberg. The result was ultimately one of the most poorly received superhero films in recent memory, and a death knell for the cinematic Fantastic Four. But that was then, it seems.
In the current Hollywood marketplace for superhero movies, the trend is beginning to lean towards exploring the characters who would traditionally be the antagonists for superheros and making the villains the lead. For years now, DC Films has been developing a feature film about Shazam's arch enemy Black Adam starring Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, with Johnson styling the character as an "anti-hero." Sony Pictures, which just struck gold by forging a deal with Marvel Studios to allow Spider-Man to join the Marvel Cinematic Universe, has set Tom Hardy to star as Spider-Man's enemy Venom, directed by Ruben Fleischer (Gangster Squad). It's therefore not surprising, after two different movie versions of the Fantastic Four (both poorly received) that FOX would turn to their nemesis to find another angle into reinvigorating the franchise.
There can be no discussion of a Doctor Doom movie without first addressing the four blue-clad elephants in the room. So the question is, will the Fantastic Four also appear in a movie centering on Doctor Doom as its protagonist? They would kind of have to, otherwise Doom would have no one to fight or even talk to (though Marvel fans know the Doctor Doom character is no stranger to long soliloquies). Thus far, Doom and the Fantastic Four are the only denizens in their corner of the universe, unless Hawley's film utilizes other Fantastic Four-related characters like the Silver Surfer or Namor the Sub-Mariner, the latter of whom is someone fans are also dying to see on the big screen.
Unlike the mad rush by other studios to launch shared universes, FOX has so far resisted the urge to unify its two major Marvel properties, the Fantastic Four and the X-Men. The X-Men universe is already expansive; besides the core X-Men films that center around James McAvoy as Charles Xavier, Michael Fassbender as Magneto, and Jennifer Lawrence as Mystique, FOX launched multiple other X-Men projects like the R-rated Deadpool films, and television projects like The Gifted and Hawley's own Legion, which is getting a second season on FX. Meanwhile, while most of their Marvel peers are now getting to play in each others' sandboxes, the Fantastic Four have been relegated to their own universe closed off from all the other superhero universes. FOX does own the rights to multiple characters ancillary to the Fantastic Four, but they have only exploited the primary four heroes, the Silver Surfer, Galactus, and - of course - Doctor Doom.
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It doesn't make sense to spin Doctor Doom on his own without the Fantastic Four. The history of Doom and the FF- specifically Doom and Reed Richards - is inextricably linked and goes as far back as the founding of the Marvel Universe by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in the early 1960s. Reed Richards and Victor Von Doom attended college together and that's where their eternal rivalry began. Both scientific geniuses, Doom's dangerous experiments into mad science caused an explosion that scarred his face. After being expelled, Doom returned to his native Eastern European country of Latveria, conquered it, and installed himself as monarch, donning his trademark grey armor and green cloak and styling himself as Doctor Doom. In the decades since, Doom has been not just the primary villain of the Fantastic Four, but one of the greatest villains in all the Marvel Universe - and later, its savior.
In the 2015 Secret Wars mega event written by Jonathan Hickman that destroyed the Marvel and Ultimate Universes, Doom's actions along with Doctor Strange and the Molecule Man saved the universe where Richards and his allies failed. Doom managed to create a patchwork Battleworld that included multiple aspects of the Marvel Universe and ruled it as its god emperor. Doom even took Richards' wife Susan Storm as his bride and their children Franklin and Valeria Richards as his own. Ultimately, Richards and a team of surviving superheroes exposed Doom and ended Battleworld, with Richards and his family ascending to another plane as the cosmic designers of the new Marvel Universe. For his part, Doom has been on an unprecedented arc of redemption, seeking to make amends for his lifetime of misdeed by donning the armor of Iron Man, as seen in the Infamous Iron Man series written by Brian Michael Bendis.
Whatever direction Hawley takes in adapting his version of Doctor Doom, it will most likely be a reboot of not just the character but of the Fantastic Four as well. There would be little sense in attempting to resurrect the unloved concepts of Trank's film. Indeed, though the 2005/2007 Fantastic Four films directed by Tim Story and even aspects of Trank's 2015 reboot presented comic book accurate versions of the main four characters, none of those films have ever gotten Doctor Doom right. Story's two films featured a Doctor Doom, played by Julian McMahon, as a failed corporate tyrant. Trank's version played by Tobey Kebbell was a misfit science student, at least in keeping with Lee and Kirby's idea about his origins, but had no other connection to the tropes of Doctor Doom. Both versions were mutated into armored monsters rather than being presented as a cunning mastermind and technological genius.
What Doctor Doom's legions of fans hope Hawley will accomplish with his film is at long last deliver a cinematic Doctor Doom as he is in the comics. It's been established now that audiences enjoy superhero movies more when they embrace the comic book-y aspects of the source material. Therefore, it's time for Doctor Doom to finally be the true Doctor Doom in a movie - complete with him as the despotic monarch of the nation of Latveria, his obsessions with power, his knowledge of arcane black magic that supplements his vast scientific genius, and yes, even his army of Doombots that serve as his servants and bodyguards. The story of a poor Latverian gypsy boy who is orphaned but then, through his own ingenuity and indomitable force of will, rises up and becomes the king of a nation is one ripe to be told, presenting Doom in all his complex, egotistical, flawed, but still admirable glory.
The story of Doom, however, would not be complete without a rival to focus his ire towards, and that would mean at least Reed Richards, if not the rest of his "accursed family," should be included in the movie. This allows FOX to sell a new kind of Fantastic Four film to audiences understandably wary of the property. Similar to how Spider-Man: Homecoming was aware that audiences had seen the prior Spider-Man films, understood the basics of the character, and then did things audiences hadn't seen before, Hawley can approach the Doctor Doom character as a brand new entity while trading on the expectation that audiences are already familiar with the basics of the Fantastic Four. Audiences don't want or need to see the Fantastic Four exposed to cosmic rays or transformed into their superpowered identities once again. We do want to see Doctor Doom the way we love him in the comics.
Focusing the film on Doom would allow Hawley to do what he has done so well on television and delve into the psyche of a powerful but unbalanced individual and how he measures himself against his lifelong rival, Reed Richards, whom he despises. For despite all of his trappings of power, deep down Doom secretly feels he's inferior to Richards - hence he must destroy Mr. Fantastic. Though it would also be fascinating to see Hawley eschew the Fantastic Four and introduce new characters from that property for Doom to tangle with like Namor, Annihilus and the Negative Zone, Attuma, or even the Mole Man, like Batman and the Joker or Superman and Lex Luthor, it would all come back to Reed Richards for Doctor Doom. Doom and Richards are irrevocably bonded, and ultimate victory for Doctor Doom would lack meaning if it isn't achieved at Reed Richards' expense.