Swamp Thing: James Mangold sees DC adaptation as a Gothic horror movie

While doing the press rounds for Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, James Mangold (whose previous credits include The Wolverine and Logan) is looking ahead to the next franchise films he’ll be working on: the Star Wars prequel Dawn of the Jedi and the DC Comics adaptation Swamp Thing… but Mangold told Variety that he doesn’t have a franchise mindset when he approaches projects like this. For example, he doesn’t see Swamp Thing as just one chapter in the huge DC Universe, but as its own standalone story – and not a superhero movie, but a horror movie.

Talking about the idea of franchise building, Mangold said, “The amount of lore and Easter eggs and fan service starts to become antithetical to any of this stuff at a certain point. It isn’t storytelling anymore. It’s large-scale advertising.” So when it comes to Swamp Thing: “While I’m sure DC views Swamp Thing as a franchise, I would be viewing it as a very simple, clean, Gothic horror movie about this man/monster.”

Mangold says he had been thinking of making “a kind of Frankenstein movie” for years, so when he heard that James Gunn and Peter Safran were taking control of the DC Comics adaptations at Warner Bros., he put in a call to suggest himself for the job of making Swamp Thing. “Just doing my own thing with this, just a standalone.“

While Swamp Thing is part of the first wave of DC movies Gunn and Safran are overseeing – as they call it, “Chapter One: Gods and Monsters” – the project doesn’t have a release date. Gunn’s own Superman: Legacy will kick off Chapter One on July 11, 2025, so it’s looking like Mangold will be making Dawn of the Jedi before Swamp Thing. Producer Kathleen Kennedy expects the Star Wars project to move forward quickly as soon as the writers strike is over – but in the meantime, Mangold will be working on the Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown, starring Timothée Chalamet. That starts filming in August.

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