Splice Director Vincenzo Natali: "There is No Swamp Thing Movie"
Posted 05.12.10 by BrentJS
Comic book fans were pretty excited by the news that super-producer Joel Silver was looking to develop a 3-D reboot of the Swamp Thing movie franchise. They became even more excited when the award-winning director of Cube, Vincenzo Natali, told MTV that he was interested in directing a Swamp Thing movie based on the works of comic book auteur Alan Moore, the creator of Watchmen and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Unfortunately, Natali recently told MTV that he will not be directing an updated Swamp Thing movie because "there is no Swamp Thing movie in the works right now" and probably won't be "any time soon."
According to Natali, "legal entanglements" associated with the character have impeded any movement on the project.
Joel Silver was going to do Swamp Thing, and he actually had a couple of scripts written, only to discover later on that the film rights were held by another company. And it's even more complicated than that, I've been told. So unfortunately, it's not going to happen any time soon.
Natali also implied that there might be some resistance to a Swamp Thing movie from the man who turned the boring monster-fighting swamp hero into an intriguing and complex earth elemental.
Everyone wants the Alan Moore version, I think. But, as I said, it's tricky because Alan Moore has very negative feelings toward the film industry ... he's not shy about it. I honestly don't even know all of the complexities of the legal issues surrounding it, but I know they are complex.
Natali's latest movie, Splice, which he wrote as well as directed, opens June 4th.