Marvel moves forward on ‘Iron Fist’ movie with ‘XXX’ writer
Deadline.com reports Marvel Studios is moving forward on a live action feature version of Iron Fist, hiring screenwriter Rich Wilkes to draft a script based on the martial arts expert whose battle with a dragon ended when he plunged his hands through the beast’s molten heart turning his fists into indestructible weapons.
Disney purchased Marvel superhero library for $4 billion and vowed to adapt these heroes into films and TV properties.
Deadline notes that “Marvel tried to make an Iron Fist movie with Artisan nearly a decade ago, as a vehicle for X-Men villain and martial arts expert Ray Park.”
The Iron Fist comic book was created by Roy Thomas and Gil Kane in the 1970s, when the popularity of martial arts films was on the rise.
While the rights to X-Men, Spider-Man, Ghost Rider, Fantastic Four and others remain at other studios, Marvel has recaptured rights to many properties and Kevin Feige is hitting the reset button on a bunch of them.
Conan writers Thomas Donnelly and Joshua Oppenheimer have been hired to adapt Doctor Strange and Marvel Studios has four more films under the pre-existing distribution deal with Paramount, which include Thor, The First Avenger: Captain America and the Robert Downey Jr.-led Iron Man films.
The final film will likely be the Joss Whedon-directed The Avengers, though Marvel is separately working on the youth-oriented Runaways and Ant-Man.
Wilkes is best known for writing the original XXX film that launched a franchise around Vin Diesel’s extreme sports hero character, but also wrote the Motley Crue biopic The Dirt, Ballad of the Whiskey Robber for Johnny Depp and Graham King.