Marvel has a ton of new movies in the works. Many of these already have directors on board, like Captain America: Civil War, Guardians of the Galaxy 2, and now the two-part Avengers: Infinity War. But there are still a bunch without. It looks like one, Inhumans, may hand the reins over to a former Saturday Night Live writer and frequent Will Ferrell collaborator.
According to Latino Review and their sources, Adam McKay, who co-wrote Marvel's upcoming Ant-Man, is being considered to direct an upcoming movie for the studio. They don’t know specifically which film he will head, but they speculate he’s up for the job leading the Inhumans adaptation.
The logic of this assumption flows like this: of Marvel’s upcoming Phase 3 movies, Captain Marvel, Black Panther, Inhumans, and Thor: Ragnarok are all without directors at the moment. They say Captain Marvel deserves a female director and Black Panther deserves a minority director. We’re talking about Hollywood, and we don’t know if “deserves” will play into it, but we like the idea. Ragnarok, about the impending Asgardian apocalypse, doesn’t seem to fit with the rest of McKay’s resume, which is most notable for comedies like Anchorman and Step Brothers.
LR’s process of elimination leaves us with Inhumans. And while that appears sound on the surface, it has the same drawbacks as the next Thor solo joint. While Ragnarok is definitely going to be a massive spectacle, Inhumans isn’t exactly small. The story of a race of superhumans spans multiple worlds, goes into deep space, and features tons of action. McKay’s biggest action movies to date are Talladega Nights and The Other Guys, neither of which are in the same stratosphere, scope and scale wise. The point is that, by this reasoning anyway, it doesn’t sound like Inhumans is automatically the only option for McKay
Granted, this doesn’t mean McKay won’t direct Inhumans. Marvel has shown a willingness to hand over large productions to directors who have never worked on anything that size before. Guardians of the Galaxy is exponentially bigger than anything James Gunn ever worked on prior to, and that turned out pretty well; Doctor Strange director Scott Derrickson is most known for indie horror films like Sinister, though he did helm the Keanu Reeves-fronted The Day the Earth Stood Still remake; and the Russo Brothers (Civil War, Infinity War) worked on sitcoms like Community and Arrested Development.
Though the idea of Inhumans is gradually being introduced on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., it’s still very, very early in the process. Inhumans doesn’t open until July 12, 2019, so there is some time for this to develop further, not to mention more than a half-dozen other Marvel movies to get through before hand. We’ll have to wait to see how this shakes out, though we likely won’t know anything anytime soon.
Do you think McKay should direct Inhumans? I think he could be awesome on the MCU Spider-Man movie. Spidey is known for his funny, sarcastic banter as he battles bad guys, and that seems like it would be a good fit. Then again, it’s hard to argue with Drew Goddard directing that film. That was a good choice.
