Nobody has had as tough a road from page to screen in the comic book world than the Fantastic Four. It seems to be the single hardest property to get right on the screen. Julian McMahon played Doctor Doom in a pair of Fantastic Four films in the early 2000’s before the property was recently rebooted, and somehow made even worse. Several of the actors from those original films have gone to much greater success in other comic book properties but McMahon has little interest in following in the footsteps of Chris Evans. Instead, he’d much rather play Doctor Doom again, and get it right.
In Julian McMahon’s mind, getting it right means getting it done at Marvel Studios. There have been some rumors of late that Fantastic Four may make its way back to Marvel and while those rumors have, thus far, appeared to be unfounded, the idea is incredibly attractive to McMahon. He told Comicbook.com that if Marvel was making the movie that Doctor Doom could be done right.
If Marvel Studios got Doctor Doom back, and I could play him the way I always wanted to, as a sniveling, conniving, freaky guy, I would do that for sure. The character I most want to play is the character I've already played! There's so much there!
It’s a testament to just how solidly Marvel owns comic book filmmaking at this point. This Doctor Doom isn’t even the first one to hope that the character could appear in the marvel Cinematic Universe. Toby Kebbell, who played Doom in the ill-fated reboot, was also hopeful that some sort of deal could be worked out to at least allow the character to appear. Doctor Doom is one of, if not the, greatest villain in Marvel Comics, and if there’s anyplace where the Marvel movies have needed some help, it’s with the bad guys.
The fate of the Fantastic Four franchise is entirely unknown at this point. While Fox had committed to making a sequel to this past summer’s bomb, even after the degree of damage was known, it has since been removed from the Fox release calendar. The sequel could still happen, putting it off doesn’t mean it’s dead, though the lack of announcement for any official plan certainly implies that even Fox doesn’t know what to do with it. If there’s any hope for Marvel to get the franchise back, it’s the fact that this was exactly the place where Sony found themselves with Spider-Man not that long ago. As a result, we’re about to get our third Spider-Man in less than a decade, but fans are optimistic.
The odds of Marvel and Fox working something out seem slim, but the same could have been said about Sony at the time. Would you like to see Julian McMahon take another swing at Doctor Doom?
