Steven Spielberg To Direct DCEU Movie?
Steven Spielberg might be finally ready to take the leap into comic book movies, and realize a lifelong dream at the same time.
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Steven Spielberg is by many measures the most accomplished director of the 20th century. He basically invented the summer blockbuster film with Jaws, perfected it with Jurassic Park, won Oscars aplenty with Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan, made groundbreaking science-fiction with Minority Report, Close Encounter of the Third Kind, and A.I., and he also made whatever Hook is. While he is factually the most commercially successful filmmaker of all time (by a pretty huge margin, no less), there is one genre he hasn’t tapped into yet: the comic book movie. Given that it is currently the overwhelmingly dominant force at the box office, it seems just a matter of time before Steven Spielberg gives in and makes one. According to his frequent collaborator David Koepp, he may be directing one for the DC Extended Universe soon.
David Koepp is the screenwriter behind some of the highest-grossest films of all time, frequently in collaboration with Steven Spielberg (and other major films like Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man). He is currently working on a screenplay adapting Blackhawks, a long-running comic book series that began in the 1940s. Spielberg is already attached to produce, and Koepp told Collider that the man behind 1941 may direct. Here’s the quote:
We have a script that’s very good and we all think it’s very good. There were a lot of management changes at Warner Bros, so I think we’ve just been kind of waiting for that to settle down.and for them to decide what they want to do with their DC Universe. Obviously I hope he does it or if he doesn’t direct it, I hope he produces it, someone great directs. Because it would be a great deal of fun. I’m very fond of the script and I hope it comes together. But again, that’s one of those movies that’s gonna need $200 million so, trying to get those whales off the beach is a big process
You might ask, what is Blackhawks and why would heavy-hitters like Steven Spielberg and David Koepp be involved? Well, for the first part, Blackhawks is a comic book franchise focusing on a group of World War II ace pilots fighting Nazis, various colorful villains, and operating from a secret island base. They are somewhat akin to the original incarnation of Captain America and his Howling Commandos in WWII, but with plans and matching blue-black outfits. While it might seem odd for Spielberg to be attracted to comparatively obscure property as Blackhawks, it actually is right in line with a lot of his other interests. For one thing, there’s a lot of beating up Nazis, which is clearly up his alley, and for another, Blackhawks was basically the original superhero story he grew up listening to and watching in various radio and serial movie adaptations. Steven Spielberg actually intended to make a Blackhawks movie all the way back in the 1980s, with Dan Ackroyd as a star. Instead, he ended up making some movie called Raiders of the Lost Ark, which also owed a lot to those childhood memories of adventure serials.
Given that this seems to be a decades-long passion project for Steven Spielberg, chances are actually decent that he might slip into the director’s seat for Blackhawks. On the other hand, the list of unrealized Steven Spielberg projects is literally in the dozens (and that’s just what we know about). His next confirmed project is reported to be a semi-autobiographical family drama called The Fabelmans, starring Paul Dano. Despite the recent success of his remake of West Side Story, he is said to have sworn off the musical genre, so at least we know that any version of Blackhawks probably won’t have a lot of singing and dancing.
