Quentin Tarantino Nearly Produced A Marvel Movie Based On A Scrapped Steven Spielberg Project

Written by Larry Hama and drawn by Gary Hallgren, Marvel Comics' limited series "Mort the Dead Teenager" ran for only four issues from 1993-1994. In an older interview with UGO, Hama admitted that he came up with the property as a response to a call from his bosses to develop more comics that could be adapted into movies or TV shows. He felt that "Mort the Dead Teenager" was conducive to that and could be adapted on the cheap. 

"Mort the Dead Teenager," a horror/comedy comic book, follows the teenager Mort Graves after he died in a racing accident while trying to beat the wicked Lance Boyle in a car race to impress Lance's girlfriend Kimberly Dimenmein (an oronym for "diamond mine"). In the afterlife, Mort meets Teen Death, the teenage son of regular Death. It seems that Hell is full and Heaven is closed for repairs, so Mort is sent back to Earth as a ghost and expected to haunt the living. At the same time, he needs to impress Teen Death, which Mort struggles with.

Mort's tale didn't greatly impact the Marvel Comics universe, but it did fulfill its intended purpose. In 1997, Variety reported that Marvel Entertainment and DreamWorks were developing a "Mort the Dead Teenager" film adaptation, with Hama penning the script alongside John Payson (who had written and directed MTV's first movie ever with 1996's "Joe's Apartment"). This iteration of the project was also backed by Steven Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis, who had brought the film rights to Hama's comic.

In spite of this, progress stalled on the movie over the years that followed. Then, in 2002, Fox News revealed that Quentin Tarantino was set to executive produce the "Mort the Dead Teenager" feature adaptation, only for the entire venture to fall apart once more.

According to Fox News, Quentin Tarantino had intended to use a "Mort the Dead Teenager" script draft that another writer, Jim Cooper, had penned on Steven Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis' watch. Dean Paraskevopoulos ("Too Smoth") was slated to direct, and it was believed that Mort would be portrayed by the previously-attached Elijah Wood, with Dominique Swain co-starring as, presumably, Kimberly Dimenmein. The movie would have been handled by Dimension Films, along with Madonna's Maverick Films. 

More information slowly began to dribble out after that. A few years later, Marvel's then-boss Avi Arad told MTV (via IGN) that eight minutes of test footage featuring actors like Jessica Simpson had been shot in order to help sell "Mort the Dead Teenager" to investors. That material, which is available on YouTube, was clearly never meant for public consumption, based on its cheap production values and use of licensed music (including a score "borrowed" from "Back to the Future"). Unsurprisingly, it also makes "Mort the Dead Teenager" look like a typical early 2000s raunchy comedy, with Mort spying on girls in a locker room and barking about how cool his new powers are. It doesn't bear Tarantino's style in the least. 

The project eventually fell apart, though, and a "Mort the Dead Teenager" movie has yet to manifest. Perhaps early 2000s audiences weren't in the mood for a corny death comedy. Meanwhile, superheroes were becoming big business at that time thanks to the success of films like "X-Men" and "Spider-Man," so Marvel clearly felt that leaning into its most popular characters was a wiser business move. With all that being said: Is it possible this particular canceled Marvel movie will come to pass one day?

Frankly, if a "Mort the Dead Teenager" movie had come out in the early 2000s as intended, it would not have been great for anyone — not if the test footage is any indicator of the film's intended tone, at least. The "Mort the Dead Teenager" comics are comedic, but they're primarily about humorously juxtaposing the grimness of death with the banal concerns of an everyday teen.

Interestingly, Marvel's comic book came out shortly after director Bob Balaban's movie "My Boyfriend's Back," another delightfully grim comedy about a dead teen returning from the grave. That film saw its dead protagonist trying to assimilate back into his old life, with the people around him generally accepting, but sometimes hating, that he's a zombie. A "Mort the Dead Teenager" movie could take a similar approach by placing its own supernaturally resurrected lead in a variety of otherwise regular teen situations.

In the 1990s, that kind of zany, "Beetlejuice"-like humor would have worked quite well. Indeed, one of the producers on the abandoned "Mort the Dead Teenager" feature, Zachary Feurer, compared the project to "Beetlejuice" while it was being developed (via Superhero Hype). But by the early 2000s, things had changed. Gen-X had started aging out of the world's central demographic, so filmmaking styles evolved. Plus, whimsical comedies about death didn't really fit well with the post-9/11 milieu.

Now, in the 2020s, this movie could work again. The cult hit retro '80s pastiche "Lisa Frankenstein" offers a useful blueprint for a potential "Mort the Dead Teenager" film, and there was even a recent blockbuster sequel to "Beetlejuice" titled "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice." If Mort were ever to be revived, now would be the time.