Quentin Tarantino Almost Made A 'Luke Cage' Movie, Discusses His Hopes For Marvel's Show

Today brings the entire first season of Marvel's new Netflix series Luke Cage to everyone's streaming devices. But did you know Quentin Tarantino once almost made a movie focusing on the Hero for Hire before he decided to make Pulp Fiction?

The revelation of the once possible existence of a Quentin Tarantino Luke Cage movie came when the filmmaker was making publicity rounds last winter for The Hateful Eight,. Now that the series is out, he was recently asked about what he'd like to see from the series adaptation of the comic book.

First up, here's what Quentin Tarantino had to say about his abandoned plans for a Luke Cage movie when he appeared on the Nerdist podcast back in December of 2015:

One of the things I wanted to do before Pulp Fiction to some degree or another...one of the outside projects that I considered doing was doing a Luke Cage movie.

Tarantino even had an idea of who should play Luke Cage in the movie, but it was discussions with friends that turned him off of the prospect of even trying to make it happen. The director explains:

In the case of Luke Cage, it was my comic geek friends that almost talked me out of it, because I thought [Laurence] Fishburne back in the day would've been a great Luke Cage, and they were talking about Wesley Snipes. And I could see them both, but it was like 'I think Fish would be better.' And they go 'Yeah...he could work out and everything, but he doesn't have the bod that Wesley Snipes has, and Luke Cage needs to have the bod.' And I literally was so turned off that that would be their both starting and ending point, that it literally put it in my head that, if I do a comic book movie, it should be an original character. It should be something I create rather than try to fit in.

Even if Tarantino decided to pursue a Luke Cage movie around the mid-1990s, I can't imagine the development would have gone well at the studio. After all, this was a time when the only superheroes on the big screen were Christopher Reeve as Superman and Michael Keaton as Batman, soon to be Val Kilmer as Batman. Bringing one of the more obscure Marvel heroes to the big screen likely wouldn't have been met with much enthusiasm by studio executives, especially before comic book movies were all the rage.

So now that it's a bit easier to bring a superhero like Luke Cage to life on screen, what does Tarantino hope to see from Netflix's series? Well, he might be a little pickier than most. Here's what he had to say to Yahoo:

To tell you the truth, I might be one of the pains in their asses because I love the way the character was presented so much in the '70s. I'm not really that open to a rethinking on who he was. I just think that first issue, that origin issue ... was so good, and it was really Marvel's attempt to try to do a blaxsploitation movie vibe as one of their superhero comics. And I thought they nailed it. Absolutely nailed it. So, just take that Issue 1 and put it in script form and do that.

But considering the current political climate and racial tension, perhaps rethinking Luke Cage was a little wise. Society was in a different place in the 1970s, and blaxploitation may not fit all that well in the framework of contemporary culture. Plus, it seems like the show is progressive in its own right since it tackles certain race topics  from today's headlines.

The only way to find out if Luke Cage is done right is to watch the show on Netflix right now.