Noah Hawley Says Doctor Doom Film Inspired By Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Noah Hawley says his in-development Doctor Doom film is taking inspiration from Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Hawley, who created the X-Men series Legion for FX, spoke with Observer.com about his work on the Doom solo film and said that it will draw on genres outside of superhero action in the same way Winter Soldier did.

“What’s interesting to me about Doom’s character is he’s the king of an Eastern European country and is there a version of this that is more of a political thriller that mixes genre?,” Hawley said. “It’s something that Winter Soldier did really well, which was kind of make a Cold War thriller movie out of a superhero movie. This is different than that, but it does have this idea of, and I don’t want to say too much about it, but it is a mixture of genres.”

He also said that the plan isn’t to try and use the film to relaunch a Fantastic Four franchise, saying, “The mandate is not to re-launch the Fantastic Four franchise as much as it is to take this fascinating and under-served character and really build a movie about him where we ask the question: Is he a hero? Is he a villain? What does he really want? We’re able to explore these questions in a serious way.”

The film was announced by Hawley during his Legion panel at San Diego Comic-Con 2017. Fox has not yet greenlit the film, and when asked whether Disney’s impending takeover of 20th Century Fox will have an effect, Hawley wasn’t sure.

“That’s not clear to me yet”, he said. “I haven’t had any larger Marvel-based conversations about if they have plans for the X-Men universe or if they have plans for their other Fox-controlled comic properties. I would have to imagine there’s a plan in a drawer somewhere.”