It’s crazy to think how far superhero movies have come in the past 10 years. They’ve gone from being seen as risky to a genre every single studio wants to cash in on. Ten years ago movie studios only saw Batman, Superman, X-Men and Spider-Man as safe bets at the box office. But screenwriter David S. Goyer had his sights set on making a very unique superhero film about the Green Arrow.
The film would have been called “Green Arrow: Escape From Supermax” and the story was that Oliver Queen had been sentenced to life in a maximum security prison for a crime he didn’t commit. In order to break out of the prison Oliver would have to team up with villains locked in the facility, many of which he put in there. Goyer was working on the project for a few years and hyped the movie up in interviews quite a bit. So what happened?
“The executive on it was really visionary,” Goyer recalls, “but the higher-ups, none of whom are at Warner Bros any more, just thought at the time, you know, we just want to make Batman and Superman movies. We don’t want to make any other characters. But this is before Marvel had really taken off, before more obscure projects like “Guardians Of The Galaxy” or “Ant-Man” or things like that had huge success, before the current gold rush I guess, if you will. It’s natural that eventually someone was going to make a villain movie, so that’s just what happened!” Goyer told Den of Geek.
Its funny to think that at one point a villain-centric movie was something a studio wasn’t interested in making. Loki is one of the most popular characters in the MCU, Sony previously had plans to make a Sinister Six film and “Suicide Squad” looks like it’s going to blow the box office to pieces. It’s safe to say that things are different nowadays and villains are all the rage.
Unfortunately we have yet to see Green Arrow get his own movie, but the character has seen a massive surge in popularity thanks to the show “Arrow.” However, with DC kicking their shared film universe into high gear, it wouldn’t be shocking to see the character make his film debut sooner than later.
Den of Geek is also featuring very detailed in-depth look at the film which we highly recommend checking out here.
