Two years ago, Noah Hawley, who developed the X-Men adjacent series Legion for Fox television revealed that he was working on a movie about perennial Fantastic Four villain Doctor Doom for the studio's film division. However, the project never really went anywhere. Following the purchase of the studio by Disney, it looked like the project would likely never happen.
However, the most recent news on a Doctor Doom film, while far from being a confirmation that it's going to happen, is at least a glimmer of hope for fans. It turns out that Noah Hawley has met with Kevin Feige of Marvel Studios, and the two discussed the project. According to Hawley...
Yeah, I mean, it combined genres. And it’s sort of a Cold War parallel film. And I really like it. I’ve been too busy to really lean on them, and they certainly haven’t called me on the phone. And during my sit down with Kevin Feige, when he asked about the Doctor Doom movie, he said, ‘Are you still working on it?’ And I said, ‘Should I still be working on it?’
Doctor Doom was a character that came along with the Fantastic Four when Fox acquired the film rights to those characters. The last attempt at a film that used any of them was in 2015, and the movie was not a success. There was no indication that anything was being done with the characters until Noah Hawley revealed he was working on a Doctor Doom movie.
Between his successful series Legion and his recently released film Lucy in the Sky, Noah Hawley had certainly been busy with other things so the Doctor Doom movie was put on the back burner. Then the Disney/Fox deal went down and it seemed likely that the Doctor Doom movie wouldn't be happening at all. Surely, Marvel Studios would want to work on its own plan for Doom and the Fantastic Four.
This is exactly what Noah Hawley himself figured, but he tells Uproxx that when he suggested that to Kevin Feige during their meeting, he got a somewhat vague, yet suggestive response.
I said, ‘I assume you guys have a plan in a drawer somewhere for the Fantastic Four.’ And he smiled a little bit, but would neither confirm nor deny. But yeah, I think it would be a great comic book movie certainly.
Certainly Marvel Studios is working on plans for the Fantastic Four, but where those plans are, we certainly don't know. It seems unlikely Marvel ever started working on anything until they knew the deal was a sure thing. There's no reason that Noah Hawley's plan for a Doctor Doom, or some version of it, couldn't be incorporated into whatever Marvel decides to do.
Certainly, if Kevin Feige told Hawley to keep working on the movie, it's probably not something the writer is allowed to tell us. We'll have to keep in the dark on that one. We'll just have to wait and see it appears. It does look like the Doctor Doom movie is still, at the very least, a possibility, and Hawley is still excited to make it if Marvel gives him the green light.
