American film maker Joss Whedon – famous for his work on Firefly, The Avengers, Serenity, Buffy the Vampire Slayer in the 1990s, Dollhouse and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. – has been noticeably absent from the media and movie related news for a while. It was nearly nine months ago that he said in an interview;
“I’ve gone off the reservation for a while. It was five years that I was working on either Avengers or S.H.I.E.L.D….That was an enormous gift they gave me; they handed me several hundreds of millions of dollars and said ‘do what you do,’ which is very rare and I was very lucky. At the same time, it’s important for me not just to have my own thing and do something smaller, but also to create a new challenge for myself because I will start to repeat myself.”
Part of his reason to retreat from view for a while was that there was a lot of backlash against certain aspects of Avengers: Age of Ultron and these people assaulted his Twitter account with nasty messages, prompting him to delete his account and further back away from the lime light. To BuzzFeed he said shortly thereafter in an interview;
“I have been attacked by militant feminists since I [first] got on Twitter. That’s something I’m used to,” he said. “Every breed of feminism is attacking every other breed… because god forbid they should all band together and actually fight for the cause. I saw a lot of people say, ‘Well, the social justice warriors destroyed one of their own!’ It’s like, Nope. That didn’t happen.”
He said he wants to focus on his writing without the distraction of angry, mean fans. He said he wants to focus on himself; “I just thought, ‘Wait a minute, if I’m going to start writing again, I have to go to the quiet place,‘” Whedon explained. “And [Twitter] is the least quiet place I’ve ever been in my life. It’s like taking the bar exam at Coachella. It’s like, ‘Um, I really need to concentrate on this! Guys! Can you all just… I have to… It’s super important for my law!'”
So what is he writing now?
Well, part of his re-emergence from the shadows is his active role with Save The Day which is a digital production company focusing on the importance of voting and representation. He recently sat down with Complex Magazine for an interview. In this interview, they asked Whedon if he would like to get back in to a franchise, something his creations and properties seem to become.
He replied “…So do I want to make James Bond movie? Yeah. Anne Hathaway does Catwoman again? Sure, I’m in. Do I want to make a Star Wars movie? Yeah. I was like, “I don’t want to make a Star Wars movie. Like, god dammit, why?” But I saw the trailer for Rogue awhile ago and I was like, “I want to do that.”
Anne Hathaway as Catwoman? In this new world of inter-related movies, it would mean incorporating the Nolan-verse in the the new DC Entertainment Universe. This would also further highlight his desire to be done with Marvel Entertainment and work with another studio, in this case DC / Warner Brothers. I’m not sure how likely this would be, but it’s something I would like to see! What do you think? Sound off in the comments below if you’d like to see Joss Whedon direct a standalone Catwoman movie starring Anne Hathaway.
One of my favorite shows was Firefly, it was shame it had such a short life