Director Paul Greengrass has shared some details on two of his major unmade films – a Watchmen movie that would have been like Todd Philipp’s Joker, and an X-Men and Fantastic Four crossover.
Speaking to the Happy Sad Confused podcast, and reported by Indie Wire, Greengrass said of his unmade Watchmen film: “I loved the book, or the graphic novel, and I liked Zack [Snyder’s] movie, by the way, which was a very faithful rendition of it. My view was, I didn’t want to do the faithful adaptation, and that may have been by the way a disastrous endeavour and that probably was why I didn’t get the movie made. I wanted to believe that these characters lived in the real world and that a lot of what they were thinking and doing was delusions.”
Greengrass then explained that: “There was something in the Joker that had that quality to it. The Joker was in a real-world, and he was filled with delusions, and somewhere the superhero identities were within people’s minds and were interior delusions as opposed to actualities and the idea would have been to find where the join was.”
He added: “I’m not sure it would have worked,” and commented he thought Christopher Nolan pulled off a similar approach with his Batman trilogy better than he could have.
As for the X-Mena and Fantastic Four crossover, the filmmaker revealed his involvement was never really a sure thing. The movie would have seen Fox's Marvel heroes clash on screen for the first time, and Greengrass had discussions about what would have been involved.
“They did talk to me about it," Greengrass said. “I wouldn't say I was attached. They did talk to me about it, and I thought about it.”
