Len Wein Talks Swamp Thing Movie Source: UGO Monday, January 5, 2004

UGO talked to comic writer and Swamp Thing co-creator Len Wein about the upcoming movie. Here's a few snippets...

UGO: The Man-Thing movie is coming. I always wondered what you and Bernie thought of that.

LW: There are a couple of elements to that particular question. One of which is that I was rooming with Gerry Conway who wrote the first Man-Thing story. It was just independent creation. We were doing Swamp Thing and Gerry and I think Gray Morrow was doing Man-Thing. Neither of us knew the other was doing the same thing. The weirdest aspect is that I actually wrote the second Man-Thing story; the whole "Whatever knows fear burns at the Man-Thing's touch". In Gerry's first story anything the Man-Thing touched burned. It was a protagonist who could never interact with anybody so I came up with the idea of fear.

I am also writing the script for a brand new Swamp Thing film for Joel Silver to produce.

UGO: That's fantastic. Are you into the first draft?

LW: I have a first draft and doing some modifications now. I'm expecting to hand it in soon. Then it goes to Warner Bros and we'll see what happens then.

UGO: How are you doing it?

LW: It's a horror movie. The new Man-Thing movie sounds just like what the old Swamp Thing was. I think it has a budget of $5 million. The Swamp Thing has a budget of way beyond that. When I had my first meeting with Joel the first thing he said was "No guy in a rubber suit." Swamp Thing will be all CGI.

UGO: I can't imagine what you thought of the Swamp Thing movies.

LW: The moments that were out of the comic were fine, the rest of it not so much. Coincidentally I ran into the director the second movie [The Return of Swamp Thing] Jim Wynorski recently and we were chatting about it briefly.

But the Swamp Thing movie has a lot of elements of mine and Bernie's run, Alan Moore's run and it is definitely a horror movie.

UGO: I know Bernie works on movies. Will he be involved?

LW: Yes he will be involved in the design work.

we only need one.

I thought it was cool to discover that neither character was a rip-off of the other. I always assumed that Man-Thing was Marvel's answer to Swamp Thing.

So Man-Thing will be low-budget, but Swamp-Thing will be a big budget movie without a guy in a rubber suit? Hard to imagine! I still remember those bloody awful Swampy flicks of the eighties (((shudder)))

i've never really been a fan of either. especially Man-Thing... because you know whenever he's guest-appearing, that D'Spayre's no-good played-out ass is going to turn up too

AaronAlmighty said:

I always liked Man-Thing when he guested in Doc Strange, because that usually meant that the story revolved around the Nexus Of All Realities, and those were usually cool tales. Did you ever read the one where Man-Thing was under the thrall of some evil Sorcerer (I don't remember which one off the top of my head), and drowned Strange? The Doc had to fight his way back to life in some shadowy world of the dead. Cool stuff!

Speaking of Doctor Strange, THAT'S the Marvel movie I would love to see made!!!

Swamp-Thing and Man-Thing? Both are a couple of pussies!Wouldn't last a day in the Black Lagoon!
[This message was edited Tue Jan 6 12:32:24 PST 2004 by TheGillman]

JediMaster said:

I've said the same thing myself before!!!