Will Mangold direct Swamp Thing before or after Star Wars?
James Gunn and Peter Safran’s DC Universe is beginning to come to fruition, thanks to a number of upcoming movies and Max-exclusive television series. The duo have already amassed a pretty significant creative team as part of DC Studios, including James Mangold, who is set to write and direct a new live-action Swamp Thing movie. Although it has been unclear exactly when Mangold’s Swamp Thing movie will debut, and how it could fit into the DCU’s early “Chapter One: Gods and Monsters” slate, a new report might add another wrinkle to things. The Hollywood Reporter recently confirmed that House of Cards and Star Wars: Andor‘s Beau Willimon is co-writing Mangold’s forthcoming Star Wars movie, which is operating under the working title of Star Wars: Dawn of the Jedi. The report states that although Dawn of the Jedi does not yet have a release date, Mangold “is expected to turn his attention” to the film after he finishes his upcoming Bob Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown.
So, what does this mean for Swamp Thing? At the moment, it’s not entirely clear, especially since there’s always a chance that production schedules could shift around for one reason or another once Mangold completes A Complete Unknown. But if The Hollywood Reporter‘s forecasting is accurate, it sounds like production wouldn’t begin on Swamp Thing until way after Dawn of the Jedi. That isn’t to say that work on Swamp Thing would start completely from scratch, however, as Mangold has previously indicated that he has been developing the scripts for both Dawn of the Jedi and Swamp Thing concurrently. Therefore, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that the script for the latter could be locked and loaded to begin production after Mangold finishes the former. A number of other films are on the DCU’s slate until then, with Superman and Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow either already filming or reported to be filming this year, and The Brave and the Bold, The Authority, and a reported Teen Titans movie in play as well. And considering the fact that the DCU doesn’t have release dates for most of its projects set in stone, there’s definitely some flexibility for whenever Mangold’s Swamp Thing were to come to fruition.
What Is Swamp Thing About?
While exact plot and casting details surrounding Swamp Thing remain under wraps, Mangold has teased how his approach would honor the comics in a new context.
“To me, the idea of making almost a noir, mystery, horror film about a guy who wakes up and he’s this thing,” Mangold explained in a 2023 interview. “There’s an amnesiac quality of, ‘How did I get here and who did this to me?’ So I’m envisioning a horror-noir film following a creature that can’t be seen, trying to piece together from fragments of memories, what happened and who did it. And none of this runs counter to the Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson and all the great work that went on … I’m just framing it up in a new movie context, but that’s all they were exploring in these comics and so beautifully.”
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