A Doctor Doom movie has long been in the works, with Fargo and Legion creator Noah Hawley having finished a script before Disney scooped up the rights to Fox’s Marvel characters. Now we’re hearing a rumor that Doctor Doom may be joining the MCU, but will it be through a Disney+ series instead of a feature length film about the villain?
If there is one Marvel character who has never gotten the cinematic outing he deserves, it’s Doctor Victor Von Doom. The supervillain has appeared in four movies so far, all iterations of a Fantastic Four live-action adaptation, and every one of those films managed to simplify his complex backstory and minimize his importance.
Years away from his true destiny of wielding Captain America’s shield, back when Chris Evans was still playing the Human Torch in the Fantasic Four movie and its sequel, Doctor Doom was portrayed as an evil CEO who has unexplained electricity powers and a crush on Sue Storm. Then Josh Trank’s bewildering Fantastic Four reboot rolled in, and reduced Doom to a walking, talking meme on the internet.
Related: Doctor Doom Script Is Almost Done, But It Might Be Too Late
What no live-action portrayal of Doom has managed to do is justice to the character from the comics, who is basically a combination of Lex Luthor and Magneto. Doom is the ruler of his own country ala Black Panther, a master of the mystic arts like Dr. Strange, and a technological savant like Tony Stark. He has frequently held the fate of the world and even entire universes in his hands, traveled to other dimensions and time periods and brought the entire roster of Marvel heroes to its knees single-handedly.
Now, if rumors are to be believed, MCU showrunner Kevin Fiege finally plans to do justice to the character, and he is going to start by giving Doom his own Disney+ show that will focus squarely on the character’s personal backstory. The show will follow a young Victor on his quest for knowledge and power as he delves deeper into the mystic arts and forbidden technology that transforms him into the mighty Dr. Dooom.
Last we heard, Noah Hawley had finished his Doctor Doom script. He updated fans as early as this past August, assuring everyone that he wasn’t done trying to get this movie made. He explained, ‘I would love to make it and figure out if that’s something that is possible. Whether or not they already have a plan in place for what to do with those characters or whether they’re open to my kind of vision for what to do with those characters. But it’s sort of on me right now to go push them.’
This latest report doesn’t mention Noah Hawley’s involvement. Will they take his script and turn it into a TV show. With the well-recieved and critically acclaimed X-Men series Legion and the anthology series Fargo, Noah Hawley has proven he can create powerful and captivating TV, so why not get him on board as a producer or showrunner if this rumor is even remotely true?
The idea of an entire show devoted to a supervillain not very well known to the general, non-comic book audience might seem strange, but you have to remember we are living in a time when The Boys, Amazon Prime’s gleefully violent show about a team of superpowered psychopaths, has become a hot audience favorite, while director Todd Philips’s origin movie for Batman’s arch-enemy The Joker is projected to be a blockbuster and already generating Oscar buzz.
Now is the best time to introduce the world to the majesty of Dr. Doom, and establish him as a major villain in the MCU. Further rumors suggest that once viewers are familiarized with Doom via his Disney+ show, he will finally appear in a Fantastic Four movie as the lead antagonist before taking on the rest of the MCU heroes.
This also means that for the first time, Doom will not be the villain in a Fantastic Four origin movie, since he will be busy with his own show at the time. That will free up the Four to finally do what fans have been clamoring for from the start: have an adventure away from Earth in the far reaches of the cosmos, where they can take on a cosmic-level threat like in the comics, possibly Galactus or Anihhilus or even the Beyonder. This news comes direct from MCU Cosmic. The fac that they do not mention Noah Hawley is interesting, and makes us wonder what is really going on here.