The Chairman and CEO of 20th Century Fox clearly has a lot on her plate, but Stacey Snider would not have it any other way. Speaking with Variety this week about the studio's plans for new properties or reimagined ones, Snider would take pride in Fox's ability to push the boundaries on a niche that is overloaded with content.
Given Disney's stranglehold for the comic book label's MCU characters, Fox have had to find their own place in the superhero world. Following the success of Logan and Deadpool, Snider sees a bright future between themselves and Marvel.
New Logan Portrayal Is Possible Amid Oscars Hype
With Australian Hugh Jackman making his swan song with the iconic Wolverine earlier this year, Snider was asked if Logan deserved to be put in the Oscars conversation.
"Absolutely," she replied. "The way it combines classic storytelling with superhero lore is brilliant."
What this movie would speak to is the change to the idea of a franchise. As the MCU desperately tries to tie in every element of their titles, Fox want to give more flexibility to their filmmakers.
"The franchises we make still need to be original," she argued. "Deadpool was part of a cinematic universe, but it felt unique. We’ve got a Predator film coming out that is unexpected and utterly fresh. I just imagined that it would take 500 hours to read the script — that it would be interior jungle, exterior more jungle and then fighting happens, but Emma (Watts) went out and recruited Shane Black. From the first page, it didn’t read like a Predator film. It’s set in suburbia. There’s a little boy and his dad at the center of the action. The X-Men is a franchise we intend to vigorously mine, but with an eye toward great variety. Kingsman can be a franchise. It’s based on a graphic novel but it’s really the creation of Matthew Vaughn and his wild imagination."
If variety is on the agenda, would a reboot of Wolverine be on the cards?
"Anything’s possible."
New Mutants Will Be Part Breakfast Club, Cuckoo's Nest and The Shining
As the conversation progressed, Snider would point to New Mutants as an example of the Logan-Deadpool model progressing beyond 2017. This will be a psychological horror installment that takes elements from classic 70s and 80s pictures, illustrating that it will be very much a standalone experience.
"If we’re going to make a superhero movie, we have to ask ourselves: 'What’s our version? What’s a Fox Marvel film?' When you look at films like Deadpool or Logan or the upcoming New Mutants, you’ll see they have their own personality. Great effort has been put into making sure they’re differentiated. New Mutants is about these teenagers who are just coming into their powers. It’s like watching mutants go through adolescence and they have no impulse control, so they’re dangerous. The only solution is to put them in a Breakfast Club detention/Cuckoo’s Nest institutional setting. It protects the people on the outside, but it’s strange and combustible inside. The genre is like a haunted-house movie with a bunch of hormonal teenagers. We haven’t seen it as a superhero movie whose genre is more like The Shining than 'we’re teenagers let’s save the world.'"
New Mutants opens April 13, 2018.
Source: Variety
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