The DreamWorks Nick Fury Movie We Never Got To See
The modern comic book movie era — which began in, take your pick, 1998 with Stephen Norrington's surprise hit "Blade", 2000 with Bryan Singer's bonafide blockbuster "X-Men," or 2002 with Sam Rami's four-quadrant phenomenon "Spider-Man — might've looked a lot different had certain key players signed on to write and/or direct different projects that were in the works at the same time as the films wound up turning superhero flicks into the dominant genre of the 21st century thus far (though that may be changing).
The period between the release of "Blade" and the shocking success of Jon Favreau's "Iron Man" was rife with maneuvering within multiple studios, particularly when it came to the Marvel Universe. 20th Century Fox controlled the rights to the X-Men and the Fantastic Four, Sony owned Spider-Man, Universal had the Hulk and Sub-Mariner, and New Line battled like hell to make an "Iron Man" movie for years until the rights reverted to Marvel Studios in 2006.
Since most studio executives weren't comic book people in the slightest, they reached out to screenwriters and directors who understood and had some affinity for these characters. One of the most in-demand scribes during this period was David Goyer. The USC School of Cinematic Arts grad cut his teeth knocking out low-aiming action dreck like "Death Warrant" and "Kickboxer 2" before emerging as an exciting sci-fi/fantasy voice in 1998 with "Dark City" and "Blade." Based on the box office and enthusiastic fan response to the latter, if you were developing a superhero movie, you at least wanted to pick Goyer's brain. And Goyer, being a genuine comic book geek, was listening to any and all serious offers.
One such offer was made in the early 2000s by then Marvel Studios honcho Avi Arad. Would Goyer like to write a Nick Fury movie? Had he signed on, the Marvel Cinematic Universe's Avengers Initiative might've never happened.
Nick Fury: the Hasselhoff years
This wouldn't have been Goyer's first tango with Fury. In 1995, when the rights to the character and the government law enforcement agency he headed up, S.H.I.E.L.D. (which, after 1991, stood for Strategic Hazard Intervention Espionage Logistics Directorate), were owned by 20th Century Fox, Goyer was hired to write a theatrical feature. According to Joanna Robinson, Dave Gonzales and Gavin Edwards' "MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios," Goyer blended the best elements of Fury's various incarnations. "It was a fairly representative adaptation of the [Jim] Steranko era," he said, "But updated with Baron von Strucker and the Satan Claw and all sorts of things like that."
Fox consigned Goyer's draft to development hell, but a few years later the studio circled back and asked if he'd be interested in writing a "backdoor" television pilot that would, if nothing else, get aired as a TV movie. Goyer, whose script required a minimum $20 million budget, was not keen on rewriting it as a $6 million slam job starring David Hasselhoff, and thus demurred. As he told Robinson, Gonzales and Edwards:
"At the time it did shoot, I was running my own short-lived series, 'Sleepwalkers.' I was also initially unenthused about Hasselhoff's involvement. I think the film was pretty mediocre, but Hasselhoff turned out to be the best thing in it. He got the joke. The script was meant to be very tongue in cheek, and Hasselhoff understood that."
Goyer probably figured he was done with Fury at this point, but he had one last shot to do the character big-screen justice. Alas, he was Begin-ing another journey.
A briefly imperiled Avengers Initiative
While Marvel Studios struggled to get "Iron Man" out of its own development hell and into production somewhere, anywhere (Goyer had previously participated in a New Line-sponsored brainstorming session with Mark Protosevich and David Hayter in the hopes of beating out a workable story), Arad spied an opportunity to make a Nick Fury movie at DreamWorks. Goyer wasn't altogether uninterested, but he'd just booked his dream superhero job: he was writing "Batman Begins" with Christopher Nolan for Warner Bros.
Arad could be a very stubborn man, but he understood Goyer's passion. He subsequently hired Andrew Marlowe, a once-hot spec screenwriter responsible for "Air Force One," "End of Days" and "Hollow Man." DreamWorks never moved forward on the project, and, in May 2006, Arad resigned as the Chief Creative Officer of Marvel Studios.
But let's say Arad had his Nick Fury movie set up at DreamWorks a year or two earlier, before Goyer hooked up with Nolan. Let's say Goyer aces the assignment, and the film is fast-tracked into production with an A-lister like Will Smith in the lead. Let's also say it's a blockbuster. How does that impact Marvel Studios' plans for "Iron Man?" Does Arad stay with the company? If so, does he have any interest in up-and-coming exec Kevin Feige's vision for an Avengers movie. Would DreamWorks allow a franchise protagonist to cameo in another studio's movie (the answer to that is no)?
It's a Hollywood "What If ...?" worthy of The Watcher.