Ben Wheatley is one of those filmmakers often cited as a favorite of cinephiles, but his movies have yet to find a niche with audiences. His most mainstream effort by far was last year’s star-studded shoot ’em up, Free Fire, and nobody bothered seeing it. But as we all know by now, being an indie darling has been the foot in the door to some big projects, and it may have gotten him a gig at Marvel.
On the Adam Buxton Podcast comedian Bob Bortimer was in the middle of a story about how he and Wheatley were working on a movie about Michael Jackson, when all of a sudden Marvel came calling…
“We were about to start that but then Ben got offered one of the big Marvel films, so it weren’t for us to say, ‘you ain’t doing that Ben.”
So what’s a “big Marvel film”, anyway? He doesn’t go into details, and certainly Marvel hasn’t confirmed anything about it. Wheatley has expressed interest in a Marvel movie before, though. Last year he told Little White Lies he’d be interested in Marvel Zombies, which is a series of spinoffs in which the entire Marvel Universe has been turned into zombies.
Doubtful that would ever happen, if only because it would certainly be R-rated and appeal only to a certain genre audience.
We shouldn’t assume this automatically means Marvel Studios, either. Wheatley could be talking with Sony Pictures for one of their Spidey-verse flicks (Morbius, maybe?) or 20th Century Fox for a future X-Men movie. Right now we have no idea but I hope there’s news on it soon.
