Vincenzo Natali Shares Pages from Aborted Swamp Thing Reboot Script

It’s easy to forget in an age where superheroes and comic books dominate movie theaters and television that some of the even lesser known characters had a crack at stardom before many others. Swamp Thing was the star of two feature films, a television show, and an animated series, but in a world where Spider-Man will be have been rebooted twice in five years, the avatar of the green remains dormant.

There was previous talk of a rebooted film back in 2009 when Joel Silver began developing a reboot from a script by Akiva Goldsman (I Am Legend), and just a few months later director Vincenzo Natali (Cube, Splice) signed on to direct, but like so many others, it wasn’t long before the project faded away. Now, Natali has shared the opening four pages to his script for the Swamp Thing reboot, which would have been in 3D, on Twitter. You can read the four pages below.

Natali’s script is almost a direct adaptation of writer Alan Moore’s first issue of his celebrated work on the character, with the descriptions nearly matching the cover and panels from “The Saga of the Swamp Thing” #20 (pictured above). The inclusion of General Sunderland further signifies the influence from the seminal arc on the script and the final page Natali posted seemingly leads into the events of Moore’s “The Anatomy Lesson,” an issue detailing the autopsy of the Swamp Thing which is often cited as among the best of Moore’s work with the character.

Created by Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson, Swamp Thing is a character that fights not only to protect plant life and ecosystems, but also the people of the DCU. He has complete control over flora, and his powers are so extensive they allow him to transport himself across the globe as long as plant life is present. The pages of his comic have also spawned a number of other notable characters, including John Constantine, whose 2014 TV series would reportedly have introduced the character in its second season before it was canceled.

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