Selma director Ava DuVernay is rumored to be in the running for a Marvel Studios film, most likely Captain Marvel or Black Panther.
With at least a year to go until either film goes into production, Marvel still has plenty of time to make its decision. In the meantime, people are making it clear that they’d be excited to see a DuVernay-helmed superhero movie—beginning with Selma star David Oyelowo.
In an interview with The Wrap, Oyelowo said, “The thing about Ava is everything she touches she elevates.”
“If Marvel is as smart and as brave to go on that journey with Ava, I’m personally the first in line to see what she does with that.
“I think she’s going to take it in directions that are both exciting and provocative, and different to what you’ve seen thus far. It’s always going to be a Marvel movie, but she is so singular as a director that I think her, plus that brand is an exciting idea.”
A superhero movie would be an unusual step for a director best known for a historical prestige drama, but hiring DuVernay would be a major coup for Marvel. The question is whether she’d actually sign the dotted line of a Marvel contract. As Oyelowo points out, DuVernay is likely to have an individual vision for any film she directs, a characteristic that doesn’t always gel with big-budget studio franchises. Marvel already saw Patty Jenkins and Edgar Wright leave Thor and Ant-Man due to creative differences with the studio, and Warner Bros. recently had to replace the director of Wonder Woman for similar reasons.
If Marvel wants to hire DuVernay (and they should, because she’d be a fantastic choice) the studio will have to give her more creative freedom than some of its previous directors, who struggled to stick to the Marvel script.
Photo via Marvel
