Shortly after the big unveiling of the DC Studios slate earlier this year, it was revealed that “Ford vs. Ferrari” and “Logan” filmmaker James Mangold had been lined up to direct the “Swamp Thing” movie that was a part of the new DC Universe.
The Swamp Thing character most recently appeared in a short-lived but acclaimed TV series on DC Universe service. It was initially planned to be ongoing but was then scrapped due to budget constraints.
Mangold had reportedly been chasing the property to direct as a film for a while. The hire seemed to be a straightforward one for DC chiefs James Gunn and Peter Safran, who made it the last of the five films on their initial ‘Gods & Monsters’ slate for this new interconnected screen universe.
Speaking with Variety the other day, Mangold indicates that despite its connections on the slate it’s also essentially a standalone film: “While I’m sure DC views ‘Swamp Thing’ as a franchise, I would be viewing it as a very simple, clean, Gothic horror movie about this man/monster.”
He adds he’d been: “toying for years with the idea of making a kind of Frankenstein movie”. When Gunn & Safran took over last Fall, he put in a friendly call to suggest himself for the “Swamp Thing” gig saying: “Just doing my own thing with this, just a standalone.”
Earlier this year, Mangold indicated he was working the scripts for both “Swamp Thing” and his untitled “Star Wars” film set in the ‘Dawn of the Jedi’ era 25,000 years prior to the original trilogy.
