Marvel Heading to ‘1602?’
Recently, Neil Gaiman told MTV’s Splash Page that a film adaptation of his Marvel limited series 1602 would be an excellent idea.
“I would love it if somebody made a 1602 movie,” Gaiman told the site. “I would love to go and see that. That is something I would just love to sit in the audience and eat my popcorn on the first night and feel proud.”
Apparently, he’s not the only one who feels that way. Marvel Studios President of Production Kevin Feige told MTV News that 1602 would be excellent on screen.
“Something like 1602 I think would be really cool to do at sometime down the line. I love it. It is spectacular,” says Feige.
However, Feige concedes, the timing isn’t quite right for Marvel to travel back in time.
“You need to know those characters very well,” explains Feige. “You need to know each and every one of those characters and who their present day reincarnations are in order to enjoy and understand and appreciate how Neil was able to reinvent them and do that period spin on them for 1602. If you don’t know them yet and if they haven’t had their own stories yet, I don’t think it would be as much fun. If you don’t know them well and you haven’t been introduced to them in a similar medium in their traditional environments, plucking them out of that won’t seem as unique or different.”
Written by Neil Gaiman, 1602 is a "What If?" storyline that focuses on classic Marvel heroes such as Spider-Man, Wolverine and Iron Man as set in an Elizabethan time period. It has spawned sequels such as Marvel 1602: Fantastick Four (written by Peter David) and 1602: New World (written by Greg Pak). Gaiman, who is a proponent of a film version of the comic, also says that he’d rather see a Guillermo Del Toro directed Dr. Strange before any version of 1602. The odds of that are fairly high as Feige recently indicated a Strange film could debut post-Avengers. Gaiman was attached to write the Strange script for del Toro and may still be involved.
