Former Marvel Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter was recently a guest at the MEGACON convention in Orlando, where the writer potentially let it slip that Marvel Studios is working on a Secret Wars film.
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Speaking about the industry in general, Shooter brought up a story about how someone from Marvel called him to offer $10,000 for Shooter to write a novelization of Secret Wars.
“This one clown called me from Marvel,” Shooter said. “He wasn’t an editor, but some executive of property management which was a little odd. He asked me if I wanted to write a novelization of Secret Wars.”
Shooter went on to mention that he was then sent a retroactive work-for-hire contract, which he ended up turning down. Another call then came in, this time from David Bogart, the Senior Vice President of Operations & Procurement of Publishing at Marvel Entertainment. Shooter says Bogart apologized for the previous call, and that the retroactive offer was for $10,000.
According to Shooter, the reason for the contract he was sent is because Marvel was trying to secure the rights to Secret Wars and to prevent any potential legal issues from arising in the future. While Shooter didn’t think Marvel needed to retroactively pay him for the characters, he ended up taking the money, and deduced on his own that a movie is coming at some point.
“This means you’re making a movie, right?” Shooter asked. “I’m not allowed to tell you that,” Bogart replied, according to Shooter. Shooter followed that up with, “Well, I think you just did.”
Perhaps one of the most well-known and iconic stories in all of comics, Secret Wars has long been rumored to be the next grand-scale film that the Marvel Cinematic Universe would lead up to. The storyline sees various Marvel heroes and villains being taken by a cosmic entity known as The Beyonder, where they then fight it out on a planet called Battleworld.
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It’s obviously unclear if the company is planning on adapting the legendary storyline, but should they, it seems like they’ll be in the clear from a legal standpoint.
