We learned at San Diego Comic Con International 2017 that Noah Hawley (Fargo, Legion) had a solo movie featuring Fantastic Four nemesis Doctor Doom in development. But the announcement of the Walt Disney Company’s purchase of 21st Century Fox led fans to speculate that the project could be in danger because Marvel Studios might opt to use the character for a Marvel Cinematic Universe project.
During a recent Collider interview, Hawley said that so far, the Disney/Fox merger hasn't had an adverse effect on the Doctor Doom movie. He added that the studio hadn’t approached him about the project:
I haven't had a single conversation yet about Doom in the context of the merger. On some level, we're still looking at a period of time – probably a year, at the least – for this whole thing to go through. Who knows, corporately, what conversations will be had. But certainly, until it goes through, it's not a legal thing. I don't know. I've been waiting for the phone to ring to see if anyone is gonna have an opinion. Otherwise, it's just business as usual for me.
Noah Hawley talks Doctor Doom (Photo Credit – Fox)
In a separate interview with Syfy Wire, Hawley said that he was working on the script. He also offered some insight on what he wants to accomplish with the project:
I'm still writing [Doom], and it's really fun and exciting. It's its own movie. I feel like those [superhero] movies often work best when you marry genres. Captain America: Winter Soldier, I thought, was a great marrying of a Cold War movie and a comic book movie. And this has its own alchemy of genre that I am really excited about. It won't be surreal. I'm not trying to do that, but it's going to tell me what it wants to be on some level. You have a character in Doctor Doom who uses magic, so the movie should be magical on some level. It's all an exploration that I'm going through.
Some reports suggest that it could take a year or so to finalize the Disney/Fox merger. For now, Fox will apparently continue to develop its properties as it always has. But there's always the possibility that Disney CEO Bob Iger, Marvel president Kevin Feige, and the folks at Fox will meet during this transition period to map out the future of the Marvel Comics characters.
