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Somebody is typing Swamp Thing right now. DC Studios co-CEO Peter Safran told Deadline on the Clayface premiere carpet that James Mangold’s version of the character is still moving: “We’re working on it, absolutely.” The script, he said, “is being written as we speak.”
That is the first word on the film in more than a year.
Mangold Wants Gothic Horror, Not an Origin Story
Mangold has been attached to write and direct since early 2023, when James Gunn and Safran unveiled their first DC Studios slate and put a horror title on it. Speaking to Variety that June while promoting Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Mangold described what he wanted: “a very simple, clean, Gothic horror movie about this man/monster.” He said he would treat it as “just a standalone.”
Coming from the director of Logan, that is a more specific promise than it sounds. Alan Moore’s run on the comic in the 1980s is one of the few superhero books that reads like actual horror, and a standalone is the only shape that lets a studio adapt it without hanging a universe off the back of it.
The Holdup Is a Calendar, Not a Script Problem
Safran put the timing on Mangold’s availability rather than on anything creative: “when you’ve already got a filmmaker involved, you’ve got to wait for their window.” Mangold has not had much of one. He released Dial of Destiny in 2023 and A Complete Unknown in 2024, and he is also attached to a Star Wars film announced the same year as Swamp Thing. No release date has been set.
Clayface Got Made, Three Other Titles Did Not
Safran was talking at the premiere of the studio’s first R-rated horror release, and the first reactions to Clayface called it brutal, gory body horror. Three other titles from that 2023 announcement, Paradise Lost, The Authority and Sgt. Rock, have been pushed back indefinitely.
The last live-action Swamp Thing was the 2019 series created by Gary Dauberman and Mark Verheiden for the DC Universe streaming service, with Derek Mears in the suit. Its order was cut from 13 episodes to 10 during production, and it was cancelled on June 6, one week after its premiere.
Those ten episodes are better than that history suggests. Before them the role belonged to Dick Durock, who played Swamp Thing in Wes Craven’s 1982 film, its 1989 sequel and 72 episodes of a USA Network series across three seasons. Mangold’s script is the first new attempt at the character in seven years.