Article Lead Image

Photo via Gage Skidmore/Wikimedia

Fox wants to make a 1970s action movie about Stan Lee

This sounds kind of like Austin Powers, but with Marvel Comics editor Stan Lee in the lead role?

 

Gavia Baker-Whitelaw

Internet Culture

Posted on Sep 14, 2016   Updated on May 26, 2021, 12:46 am CDT

Marvel icon Stan Lee is getting the Hollywood biopic treatment, although it’s not the Mad Men-style historical drama you might imagine.

Stan Lee co-created numerous Marvel superheroes including Spider-Man, Iron Man and the X-Men, and presided over Marvel Comics during its 1960s heyday. It’s easy to see why 20th Century Fox snapped up the rights to his life story, but it doesn’t sound like they’ll be making a traditional biopic. Instead, The Hollywood Reporter describes the studio’s idea as an action-adventure movie set in the 1970s.

Described as tonally similar to Kingsman: The Secret Service and Roger Moore’s Bond movies, the project was pitched as a fictionalized action movie with a middle-aged Stan Lee in the lead role. This sounds like a dream come true for the real Stan Lee, who at the age of 93 is still a champion of self-promotion.

Fox also owns the film rights to the X-Men and Fantastic Four, meaning that some version of those characters could appear in the (still hypothetical) movie.

The rumored film doesn’t actually have a script yet, so Fox could easily end up doing something different with Lee’s life story. But for the moment, we’re picturing something along the lines of Austin Powers, with a 40-something comic book editor in the lead role. Fanboy culture truly is a wild ride.

Share this article
*First Published: Sep 14, 2016, 9:47 am CDT