CraveOnline: Is there more to come with Trevor? Because this ends on a cliffhanger, and I want to know what happens next, what the means to the Marvel Universe…
Drew Pearce: [Laughs.] Well first of all, I’m glad you want to know what happens next because that means I’ve done my job as a writer and director. If you were like, “Nah, I really don’t give a shit what happens after this,” then I would feel like I’d failed. Obviously in the world of Marvel who can tell what would happen next?
Well, you guys! Not me, I have no idea.
I’m a gun for hire. I occasionally get to play in the Marvel sandbox and I like to think of myself as family, but I’m a distant member of that family. I’m not in the central hub that makes the bigger decisions, but you know, I think Trevor and a lot of the things that come up in the short push the MCU forwards and so it will be interesting to [see where] I, or more likely other people, then take those strands.
Do you want to be part of the core family?
Oh, I am so privileged to be part of it thus far, and really, really hope to going forwards, both as a writer and hopefully as a director as well. When people talk about the classic movies of their youth and how nothing will ever better than Star Wars and Raiders and Back to the Future, I feel like I’ve been lucky enough to work in an epoch-defining area of modern blockbustering that will be just as potent and unassailable for 12-year-olds now, in the future, as those things felt to us then. And the extension of that is also how privileged I feel that Kevin Feige and Louis D’Esposito backed me to direct this short. Directing is something I did, but at the TV level in the UK, and for the last three or four years I have just been writing, which I’ve been very lucky to do as well but you know, they took a risk on me for this. No, I consider myself – as they say – lucky to be part of the family when they ask me to a family party, but there’s lots of people who want to go to those parties so I’m here when they want me.
I think you were originally brought to Marvel as the writer of The Runaways, is that correct?
That’s right, yeah.
Is that still in development? Is that still actively going?
Well the script is still actively in the vault. Look, I still hope very strongly that Runaways is a contender for Phase Three. I’ve got absolutely no reason to think that it is or isn’t. It’s a script that Kevin likes. It’s a property that has huge potential in my opinion, and it’s a whole new direction for one branch of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It’s also not a property about a single male 30-something superhero, and hence isn’t the same kind of property that, on a marketing level, is a safer bet. But I hold out hope that this is a world where Runaways can happen because I think if it’s done for the right budget it could be a brilliant and really original way of coming at the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
It’s interesting because Brian K. Vaughan’s first story arc on that series reads just like the script to one long movie, maybe with a couple extra chapters in there. You don’t really need the vampire bit of it.
Yeah, my version of it, though actually differing in a lot of different ways from some of the details and stuff … But I think Brian K. is a genius, and I think Runaways is a brilliant idea, brilliant concept, brilliantly conceived as well, and my movie absolutely followed the arc of the first run of Runaways. I mean I think the interesting thing about Runaways is, done properly, and this is going to sound grandiose, but my big reference point was The Godfather.
I can see that.
The Pride were even more like a crime syndicate, in a way, and it’s like a totally heightened version of that realization where you realize that your parents aren’t infallible, heightened through crime and then heightened again through superpowers. It’s almost this brilliant inversion of the Spider-Man metaphor, that with great power comes great responsibility. The idea of realizing that through seeing your parents’ misuse of power is just so potent, and such a brilliant engine for a movie. As you can hear I’m still very excited about Runaways and I really hope it happens.
I feel the same way. Hey, you got your start in TV.
Sure.
Now that Marvel is doing TV is there any character that you, even just in a pipe dream, would like to tackle in that milieu?
Well I think I’m probably a bit late to that party, and also “The Other Drew” – as I like to think of him, though in the real world I think people think of him as “The Drew,” I’m maybe “The Non-Drew” – Drew Goddard is who I’m speaking about of course, who is just unbelievably talented… jealous-makingly talented… I would have loved a crack at Daredevil. I am, from an outsider’s point of view, very glad it’s Drew Goddard [laughs] who’s doing it because he will do an extraordinary job.
And weirdly, one of the other properties I’ve always loved to look at, and one I wrote a Marvel One-Shot about that never got made was Jessica Jones from Bendis’s Alias. One of my favorite modern characters in the Marvel Universe. Now again, I know that Jeph Loeb’s had a version of that in development for years so that’s not something I could have gotten near, but I think what Bendis does with Jessica Jones in those comics is just ferociously original, has never really been touched on. The first three books of Alias, there’s just nothing comes near them, for me, as a female character in the Marvel Universe.
But no, I think to be honest, the custodians of the ones I really love are already eminently more practiced and creative than I am, so you know… I missed that boat, really. But you never know how it’s going to happen in the Marvel Universe, so we’ll wait and see.
William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and co-host of The B-Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
