After writing Academy Award-calibre biopics like the 2014's The Theory of Everything and this year's Darkest Hour, screenwriter Anthony McCarten is setting his sights on the currently popular comic book movie genre, admitting that he hopes to write a Marvel film someday.
Emerging as one of the upcoming Award season frontrunners, Darkest Hour follows the early days of former Prime Minister Winston Churchill as Hitler closes in on Britain during World War II and how he stood his ground when everyone seemed to have lost all hope of possibly winning the battle. The movie has been generating great buzz from critics, specifically after seeing Gary Oldman's dramatic physical transformation in order to immerse himself in his role as the iconic British political leader. The war drama film is directed by Joe Wright (Atonement).
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McCarten sat down with Screen Rant while doing the press rounds for Darkest Hour, and we asked him what other movie genres he might be interested in working on. Here's what he has to say:
SR: Is there any other genre that you've written that you would be interested in writing, is there any other genre that you would want to do in the future?
Anthony McCarten: I'd love to get into the Marvel Universe.
SR: Really?
Anthony McCarten: Write a James Bond. You know I love challenges and I'm constantly curious.
SR: What Marvel character in particular would you like to take a stab at if you had your choice.
Anthony McCarten: I guess Spider-Man. I think I can do something interesting with that. I'm not so much into the sort of Green Lanterns and all those minor minor characters. When I grew up on Superman and Batman, you know the more human they are the better.
While we have not really seen McCarten do a more lighthearted, coming-of-age film like the kind that Marvel Studios has been developing for Tom Holland's version of the iconic superhero, the writer's ability to humanize his characters and at the same time, make them stand out is a great starting point. Both Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones (Theory of Everything), as well as, Oldman, have given some of their best performances in their career with McCarten's story.
Additionally, the New Zealand-born writer is not entirely new to the comic book genre. In his novel Death of a Superhero, he tackled the story of a dying 15-year-old boy who draws comic book stories of an invincible superhero as a way to cope with his mortality. The book was later adapted in 2011 into a movie starring Thomas Sangster opposite Andy Serkis, and was met with positive reviews.
With a penchant for biopics (McCarten also worked on Bohemian Rhapsody - the biographical drama film tackling the formation of Queen with Freddie Mercury at the center), it would be interesting to see how McCarten might spin a full-blown superhero film.
