john-ridley-directing-american-crime

Oscar winner John Ridley (’12 Years A Slave’) has been busy working on his acclaimed series ‘American Crime’ for ABC and an upcoming Showtime miniseries ‘Guerrilla’ (starring Idris Elba) which is currently filming in London, which Ridley is executive producing, writing and directing.  But his mystery Marvel project for ABC is apparently still in the works.  And we still don’t know what it is.

ABC chief Channing Dungey was on hand at the Television Critics Association press tour to discuss the network’s upcoming slate and did discuss Ridley’s project although he couldn’t shed much more light on it:

Helga Esteb / Shutterstock, Inc. S M L XL Size Guide
Helga Esteb / Shutterstock, Inc.
S M L XL Size Guide

“Yeah, so John is working on a rewrite of that script for Marvel at the moment. We have not seen a new version of it. He’s been on production of his show, over in London, and on season 3 of American Crime, so those are the things that have been top of mind for him of late. But I have heard from Marvel that he is working on a revision to that script.”

Several projects have been suggested as being the one which Ridley was working on, including ‘Cloak & Dagger’, ‘The Punisher’ and ‘Ms. Marvel’.  ‘Cloak & Dagger’ and ‘The Punisher’ are both one their way, but Ridley is not attached to them and neither is on ABC.  (‘Cloak & Dagger’ is coming to Freeform and ‘The Punisher’ is joining the Netflix lineup.)  It was also suggested that maybe Ridley would be behind ‘Marvel’s Most Wanted’, a planned spinoff from ‘Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’ but that also turned out to be untrue and ABC didn’t pick up ‘Marvel’s Most Wanted’.

That leaves ‘Ms. Marvel’, which could still be a possibility.  Ms. Marvel a.k.a. Kamala Khan, is one of Marvel’s biggest breakout characters in recent years.  Her comic balances the fun exploits of an amateur super hero learning the ropes, while balancing teenage high school drama as well as racial and religious subjects that come along with Kamala being a Muslim Pakistani American.  Ms. Marvel has consistently headlined her own comic book and recently served as a member of the ‘All-New All-Different Avengers’ and currently as one of ‘The Champions’ with other teenage heroes like Nova and Spider-Man (Miles Morales).

One complication could be that Ms. Marvel takes her name and inspiration from Carol Danvers, the hero now known as Captain Marvel.  Marvel Studios has a ‘Captain Marvel’ movie, with a script by Meg LeFauve and Nicole Perlman, starring Academy Award winner Brie Larson, due for release in 2019.  It wouldn’t make much sense to have Ms. Marvel come before Captain Marvel.  But at the rate that this project is moving, it may time out perfectly after all.

That is IF ‘Ms. Marvel’ is the project Ridley is working on.  At this point, it’s anyone’s guess.  It could be ‘Howard the Duck’ for all we know.

Are you glad to see Ridley is still working on something for Marvel and ABC?  Which property would you like to see him tackle?

Source: Entertainment Weekly