Aaron Sorkin – screenwriter of The American President, The Social Network, and The Newsroom – is now looking into writing movies and/or television for Marvel and DC. Interestingly, the screenwriter doesn’t appear to be picking sides, as he’s meeting with both Marvel and DC representatives in search of the right kind of character he can write for.
If you’re one to think that Sorkin isn’t the kind of guy who’d pick up a comic book… Then you’d be right, by his own admission. But regardless of Sorkin’s unfamiliarity with any given source material, Marvel and DC are both interested in seeing if he’d be up to writing for one of their characters, as he explained to ComicBook.com at CinemaCon:
“I happen to have meetings coming up with both DC and Marvel. I have to go into these meetings and tell them as respectfully as I can that I’ve never read a comic book. It’s not that I don’t like them, it’s just that I’ve never been exposed to one. So, I’m hoping that somewhere in their library is a comic book character that I’m gonna love and I’m going to want to go back and start reading from the first issue on.”
Sorkin is a particularly interesting pick as a writer because much of his work is very much grounded in reality, covering fields such as business (Moneyball), government (The West Wing), and law (A Few Good Men). So perhaps it would be in the best interests of the Big Two to reach out to him with comic book franchises that conceptually touch heavily upon those things.
Hopefully, this open level of discussion for a writer like Sorkin between Marvel and DC representatives in the comic book movie/comic book television industry can lead to an environment closer to the one present in the actual comic book industry itself, where writers and directors are more free to work on projects for either company. That’s probably still a ways away from actually happening, but still – one can only hope.
Source: ComicBook.com
