Seth Green Says You Shouldn't Get Your Hopes Up For A New 'Howard The Duck' Movie
Of all the Easter eggs and references scattered throughout Guardians of the Galaxy, the last-minute cameo from Howard the Duck is undoubtedly the best and weirdest. It takes a certain amount of nerve to drop one of Marvel's strangest characters into a movie already packed with niche C-listers, so you have to admire director James Gunn's choice to end his big, weird movie with a big, weird character.
However, Guardians of the Galaxy was a massive hit, transforming the likes of Star-Lord and Drax into household names. The same wave of instant popularity also washed over Howard. Suddenly, normal people were interested in this anthropomorphized alien duck, which is just plain weird. It must be especially weird for Howard's voice actor, Seth Green, who had to make it known at this year's New York Comic-Con that there are currently no plans for a Howard the Duck movie. Not even after Marvel announced three untitled films for 2020.
Check out the last Howard the Duck movie update after the jump.
Speaking with IGN, Green didn't even do that usual Marvel actor thing where you dance around the truth and say "maybe" a lot and talk about how no one knows anything and anything is possible. Nah. He just straight says that Howard isn't getting a movie. Maybe another cameo, maybe a Marvel One-Shot short film, but nothing more than that:
Nobody has said anything to me about that. The truth is, Gunn and I are buddies from Scooby-Doo. So, the whole Howard the Duck thing, and me getting to be that was a last minute, 'who do I know who is in town who can do this on this date before the color print delivers?' Nobody is thinking about a Howard the Duck movie. I love that people are running with it. But you know, it's not going to happen. The most I can imagine, and you can't quote me, because it's not based in fact, but the most I can imagine is that the character could cameo at some point in some other thing. Like, we saw Cosmo already. So there is going to be some kind of rocket offshoot, right? Some kind of outer galactic mayhem. You can imagine that Howard would cameo in that. But he'll never have a standalone movie again.
You've got to love how upfront Green is about this whole thing. After all, he was just doing a favor for the guy who wrote a role for him in Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed, not the director of one of 2014's biggest blockbusters. In fact, the huge success of the film hasn't changed how Green views his cameo. It's just a goofy joke:
It doesn't feel like part of that thing. It's almost like a joke that I had with a buddy. But now, everyone else has gotten to hear it. It's still no less than a joke.
Of course, the Howard the Duck character carries a certain amount of baggage. While comic book fans know him from the beloved comics originally written by Steve Gerber and pencilled by Val Mayerik, most people only know him from his disastrous 1986 film, appropriate titled Howard the Duck. Produced by George Lucas and directed by William Huyck, the movie adaptation ditches all of the wry humor and satire of Howard's comic book adventures in favor of unpleasant, tone deaf weirdness. The movie took the Marvel out of Howard – both literally and figuratively – and his reputation amongst non-nerds still hasn't fully recovered.
Still, Guardians of the Galaxy did reignite interest in the character, which led to Marvel giving him a new ongoing series earlier this year. Written by Chip Zdarsky and drawn by Joe Quinones, the new series follows Howard as he attempts to make a living as a private detective in a world where A) he's a talking duck and B) there are superheroes and people with weird powers on every street corner. It's very good and very funny and filled with all kinds of amazing, dumb Spider-Man jokes:
So while you shouldn't get your hopes up for new movie, Marvel is giving the character a proper chance at redemption. You just have to pick up an actual comic book. Feel free to read his speech bubbles as Seth Green, if that will make you happy.