While it seems that anyone who’s ever picked up a camera, even in jest, has been asked to do a Marvel movie, some noted filmmakers like Judd Apatow and Jane Campion have never been approached. So the two esteemed directors decided to do a superhero-like team up of their own … sorta.
For his “latest film,” Directors Talkin’ to Directors About Directing (a bit he did for the DGA Awards, which he hosted), Apatow spoke with Campion and promising up-and-comers Steven Spielberg, Kenneth Branagh, Denis Villeneuve, and Paul Thomas Anderson.
Momodu Mansaray/WireImage; Presley Ann/Getty Images
The Power of the Dog director may have won the same top DGA prize as Nomadland‘s Chloé Zhao, who later went on to direct Marvel’s The Eternals, but that never seemed like a path Campion would follow. The Oscar-winner has voiced her, shall we say, utter revulsion of superhero movies in the past, calling them “noisy” and “ridiculous.”
“I hate them,” she told Variety a few months back. “I actually hate them.”
But maybe, just maybe, that was coming from a place of hurt. Campion tells Apatow she just feels “bad” because the “Marvel people” never asked her to make one. Seeing that Apatow has also been denied the honor, she suggests they make a Marvel movie together.
“I think us doing a movie would be a pretty good hook,” Apatow says. “Because you would get everything you want in a movie.”
We would, wouldn’t we? Humor, pathos, Benedict Cumberbatch. Sure, Apatow and Campion might just be joking, but how many years and MCU Phases are we away from Dr. Strange and the Power of the 40-Year-Old Piano? And Apatow’s already got some ideas for an MCU venture.
“I’ve always been about invisibility with some mind reading sprinkled in,” Apatow tells EW. “Bulletproof face but not a bulletproof body, too.”
Though Apatow was purportedly excited to team with Campion on their hypothetical Marvel movie, that didn’t stop him from trying to pull PTA in on the gig. The Licorice Pizza director said he was more interested, however, in doing “a Zucker brothers movie,” referencing the kings of ’80s slapstick comedy.
“I gotta get back to Jane,” Apatow says. “I have to talk to Jane about that.”
Just as he’s ready to put in a call to MCU head honcho Kevin Feige, Campion responds with a “Kevin who?” And just like that, our dreams of a Campion/Apatow Marvel film were snaptured into oblivion.
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