Believe it or not it’s been months since James Gunn was let go from directing GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL.3, and still, there has been no word of who Disney and Marvel plan to hire to take his place. There have been rumors and names thrown about, but nothing sticks for longer than a typical news cycle. With his new movie on the way, director Adam McKay has been on the press tour and recently revealed he’s had talks about taking over the reins for the sci-fi adventure.
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McKay – whose new movie VICE hits theaters next week and has been nominated for all sorts of awards – was speaking on the Happy Sad Confused podcast (the 40:30 mark) when he started talking about his experience working with Kevin Feige and Marvel, having done rewrites on 2015’s ANT-MAN. Interviewer Josh Horowitz said he thought he could be on the GUARDIANS shortlist, and McKay confirmed he had talks with Feige about the project.
"We've talked a little bit. Yeah. We were kicking around the idea of the Inhumans at one point. We're always kind of talking. I think Feige is just the greatest and I think what they're doing over there is amazing."
Obviously, he doesn’t go into a ton of detail about any conversations he may have had, but one thing to take from this is that McKay always seems to be in Marvel’s Rolodex for anything they might need. Horowitz was right in thinking he was probably on a shortlist – a list that may also include directors like Taika Waititi and the Russo Brothers – but whether they’ve had long, progressive talks about it is still a mystery.
As a matter of fact, in this same breath, McKay said he is down for any number of projects the studio throws his way, saying how he would like to make a movie around the character Nova, and that he would do anything for the chance to direct a Silver Surfer movie.
Silver Surfer is the one I want to do, man. I would do anything to do Silver Surfer because visually that would just be…you could do what the Wachowskis did with SPEED RACER with the Silver Surfer. At the same time, there’s a great, emotional story in there, where the guy has to make the choice to save his planet, Norrin Radd [Surfer] has to save his planet. That would be the one.
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McKay then lost a bit of hope, thinking the rights for Surfer were still at Fox, not with Marvel Studios. Upon being told that the whole thing becoming one with Disney buying Fox, he joked then that means it must be time for him to tackle the movie. “I think after Dick Cheney and economic collapse maybe I need a little break!" he said.
Earlier in the conversation McKay talked about how big a fan of the Marvel comics he was growing up and how much fun he had doing ANT-MAN, so while whether or not he takes on GUARDIANS is purely a matter of speculation, I think it's safe to think that he will take on a project at some point in the future. He clearly wants to, and if he has the working relationship he does with them then it is probably only a matter of time. He has been hitting it out of the park with movies like BIG SHORT and VICE, so maybe it's time he got $150 million to play with.
VICE is in theaters December 25.