Creator of TV's Legion working on Doctor Doom solo movie for 20th Century Fox

San Diego Comic Con 2017 is underway, which should mean all manner of big movie announcements coming our way in the days ahead – and one of the first big surprises has come from Noah Hawley, creator of TV’s ‘X-Men’ spin-off ‘Legion.’

Hawley revealed to the audience at a ‘Legion’ panel that he is working on a new feature film for 20th Century Fox: “Two words: Doctor. Doom.”

The Hollywood Reporter have since confirmed that the plan is for the 50 year-old Hawley – a successful author, TV writer and showrunner on both ‘Legion’ and ‘Fargo’ – to both write and direct the solo movie based around the ‘Fantastic Four’ antagonist, often regarded Marvel’s most iconic villain.

While it may yet be early days for the ‘Doctor Doom’ movie, it seems entirely feasible that this could be one of the six as-yet unconfirmed Marvel movies that Fox has lined up for release between 2019 and 2021. It also demonstrates some interesting outside-the-box thinking from the studio in relation to the ‘Fantastic Four.’

Fox may have had great success with the ‘X-Men’ franchise, but the ‘Fantastic Four’ has proven a harder nut to crack. The first two films made by director Tim Story in the 2000s tend not to be looked too kindly upon, whilst the 2015 reboot from Josh Trank was an outright disaster both critically and commercially.

Even so, the studio – long reported to have had a very uneasy relationship with Marvel Entertainment – would not seem too willing to allow the rights to the characters to revert to the comic book label-turned-film and TV giant. Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige recently debunked rumours that this was on the cards.

As such, Fox will need to have another ‘Fantastic Four’ movie in production within a certain time to keep their option on Marvel’s ‘first family’ from expiring.

As Doctor Doom is intrinsically linked to the Fantastic Four, making a movie based around that character would be a creative way of side-stepping the need to reboot the franchise yet again (the chances of a sequel to the 2015 film seem very, very slim indeed).

That said, there have been rumours of another ‘Fantastic Four’ movie in the works centred on the children of Reed Richards and Susan Storm, so it isn’t out of the question that both films might be happening.

Nothing else is known of the ‘Doctor Doom’ movie at present – but it doesn’t seem likely that Toby Kebbell, who played Victor Von Doom in Josh Trank’s film, will return to the role. Nor would we expect there’s much chance they’d bring back Julian McMahon, who played the character in the Tim Story films.

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