Vincenzo Natali posts the first 4 pages of his lost Swamp Thing reboot

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

Back in 2009, we began to hear that famed producer Joel Silver was interested in bringing the DC Comics character SWAMP THING back to the big screen. Over the '80s and into the '90s, Swampy had been at the center of two feature films (directed by Wes Craven and Jim Wynorski), a five episode cartoon, and a live action series that ran for three seasons, but the eco-superhero had been on no adventures outside of comic books for nearly twenty years when Silver started talking reboot. In 3D.

Comic writer Len Wein, who co-created SWAMP THING with Bernie Wrightson, wrote a draft of the screenplay which was then reworked by Akiva Goldsman before Vincenzo Natali, director of CUBE and SPLICE, signed on to take the helm. Natali wrote his own draft of the script, taking strong influence from Alan Moore's run on the comic book, during which Moore had completely re-invented the character.

For some reason, SWAMP THING 3D was never able to make it into production and the project was abandoned. All these years later, Natali has decided to give the world a glimpse at what might have been, posting the first four pages of his script on Twitter.

All of my familiarity with SWAMP THING comes from the movies and the few random episodes of the TV shows I managed to catch, but I loved those iterations of the character when I was a kid. I haven't read what Moore did with him, I've only heard people rave about it, but I still think it's a shame that the reboot didn't happen. I would love to see SWAMP THING wade into this modern era of comic book movies.