By Fox has acquired the life rights of Marvel Comics writer Stan Lee. The studio is planning to make a fictionalized period action-adventure film about Lee’s life in the style of a Roger Moore James Bond film and Kingsman: The Secret Service. Fox, of course, is the studio responsible for Deadpool, the X-Men movies, and the Wolverine films. In related news, Marvel Studios would probably do this project better.
Details on the Stan Lee movie are scant at the moment. Marty Bowen and Wyck Godfrey will produce the film, which is currently in search of a screenwriter. They could write this movie in the old-school Marvel style, meaning they’ll have a storyboard artist laboriously map out the movie’s narrative and storybeats and then Stan Lee will take all of the credit.
I kid, I kid.
The real-person fictional-adventure model is nothing new. Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter comes to mind, but briefly and fleetingly since it’s so forgettable. The many Wong Fei-hung movies (e.g., Once Upon a Time in China, Drunken Master) have turned a real-life Chinese folk hero into a cinematic legend; the pattern has repeated with the recent Ip Man movies, notably those starring Donnie Yen. There have also been attempts to do this with Renaissance man (of action) Leonardo da Vinci and Sir Isaac “Action/Reaction” Newton.
They really need to do one of these about Jack Kirby. Have him get into an insane adventure through time and space with his wife Roz. He’ll also draw ten pages of The Fantastic Four in two hours to make a deadline.
Would you watch Stan Lee as Roger Moore as Stan Lee? Is a fictionalized adventure what they should be doing? What other historical figures should they do this with? Let us know in the comments, true believers.
[via THR]