Now that Black Widow has entered theaters, Taskmaster is officially in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. In a matter of months, Moon Knight will debut on Disney+, giving fans their first look at the live-action version of Marc Spector. Some 13 years years ago, however, the two were supposed to fight each other in a pre-MCU movie from the mind of action filmmaker Joe Carnahan.
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Before the MCU became Hollywood’s biggest franchise, the live-action film rights to Marvel characters belonged to a variety of studios and production houses. When it comes to Taskmaster, Carnahan was developing the project with Alex Young after having worked together on Fox’s The A-Team reboot.
Though the project eventually fizzled out as Marvel Studios started gaining steam with the likes of Iron Man and The Incredible Hul, Carnahan has said as recently as 2010, he’d love to do the movie, comparing it to something like Frank Castle and the Punisher.
“For Alex [Young] I was going to do Taskmaster. Originally I wanted to do Juggernaut ’cause I had a really good take on that, and then Taskmaster was something we talked about, and I haven’t discussed it with him for ages, but I would love to get back in,” Carnahan told SuperHeroHype at the time. “I love the idea of a guy with photographic reflexes, he can see something and repeat it, I thought that was such a cool idea. I think there’s a Moon Knight series where he just beats the sh*t out of Taskmaster and kind of ruined him, and it’s a cool character. I think it might be one of those Marvel characters you really need to reimagine because he’s got the whole skull and cape—it’s a bit grandiose I think—but it would certainly be a cool thing.”
The filmmaker went on to add that the movie would have been in line with something like Punisher or Blade in tone. Carnahan even brought up Fox’s Deadpool fiasco in the Hugh Jackman-starring Wolverine.
“It was very much in the realm of the Punisher,” he continued. “It’s kind of funny because it’s almost what they were going to do with Deadpool, that same sort of smart-ass thing, before they went the way of–and I know that there are fans that hated Fox for doing that whole thing with Deadpool and Reynolds in ‘Wolverine’–but you have to create that differentiation. I think at least Taskmaster, he’s so below the radar. He’s even below where Blade was considered a B-tier Marvel character, this guy is even lesser-known. It would be a lot of fun to write it as a series and then see what came from there.”
Now that Taskmaster has debuted in live-action, it probably stands to reason the character won’t be getting a solo flick — especially now the Kevin Feige-led outfit changed the villain’s origin heavily.
Black Widow is now in theaters and streaming on Disney+ Premier Access. If you haven’t signed up for Disney+ yet, you can try it out here.
Which characters would you like to see makeup the MCU’s Dark Avengers? Let us know your thoughts either in the comments section or by hitting our writer @AdamBarnhardt up on Twitter to chat all things MCU!
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