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Marvel reportedly developing a live-action Secret Wars adaptation

Former Marvel creator Jim Shooter says he was approached about a possible Secret Wars live-action crossover

Marvel Secret Wars

Marvel might be planning a crossover adventure movie so huge it’ll make Avengers: Endgame look like a small indie film. According to Jim Shooter, Marvel Studios is adapting a big-screen version of the classic comic storyline Secret Wars. Shooter, who wrote the original ‘80s story, revealed the news while speaking at MegaCon in Orlando, as reported by CBR.

The veteran comic writer claims he was contacted by someone to pen a novelisation of Secret War. When he turned them down over a contract dispute, he was contacted by David Bogart, senior vice president of operations and procurement of publishing at Marvel Entertainment. Bogart apparently offered Shooter $10,000 as a new retroactive work-for-hire contract.

When Shooter asked if this meant Marvel was working on a Secret Wars movie, Bogart said he couldn’t tell him, to which Shooter replied, “you just did.” It’s worth taking this news with a pinch of salt as neither Disney nor Marvel Studios have confirmed that they plan on adapting Secret Wars. Still, this isn’t the first time there have been mutterings of this particular action movie.

The Russo brothers, who directed Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame, have both spoken in the past about the possibility of adapting the classic crossover. They’ve both said they’d jump at the opportunity to direct a Secret Wars movie and have talked at length about their love of the story.

“I read [Secret Wars] when I was 10 or 11, and it was the scale of getting all of the heroes together. It was one of the first major books to do that — that was really event-storytelling to me at its finest. And what happens when you put all of those personalities together. I also like the idea of villains having to team up with heroes,” Joe Russo told BroBible. “To execute something on the scale of Infinity War was directly related to the dream of Secret Wars, which is even larger in scale.”

Entering the realm of speculation, Marvel certainly seems to be setting up something. The Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Phase 4 has been very preoccupied with the Multiverse and the idea of alternate versions of classic characters. While this doesn’t completely align with the plot of the ‘80s Secret Wars – where all the Marvel heroes and villains are dumped on a random planet and fight to entertain a cosmic being known as the Beyonder – it does with the 2015 event of the same name.

That story saw the multiverse collapse in on itself, destroying all of reality. Only a small pocket of reality, cobbled together from various parallel universes, survives, and it’s ruled over by Doctor Doom, who’s stolen the godlike power of the Beyonders. Thankfully a handful of heroes survive the destruction of reality, and they manage to depower Doom and reboot the multiverse.

Might Marvel Studios be introducing the idea of parallel dimensions to set up this story? It’s possible we know that there are plans to bring the Fantastic Four into the MCU and play a major role in Secret Wars. It might also be an easy way to explain the eventual appearance of the X-Men and the Marvel mutant population.

We also don’t know who the new big bad of the series will be now Thanos has been dealt with. Fans seem to think it’ll be Kang the Conqueror, who was introduced at the end of Loki, but that seems a bit obvious. Doom, if done right, could be a fantastic new villain for the Avengers and heroes of the MCU to battle.