After scoring a huge critical and commercial success (and an Oscar) for last year’s hit horror-thriller Get Out, one would assume that studios would be chomping at the bit to work with actor-turned-filmmaker Jordan Peele.
However, it seems that Disney are reluctant to move ahead with one project that Peele has pitched to them – a movie based upon the cult 1990s animated series Gargoyles, which ran for three seasons between 1994 and 1997 and drew favourable comparisons to the classic Batman: The Animated Series.
According to Richard Rushfield of industry newsletter The Ankler (via SlashFilm), Peele “walk[ed] in and says he wants to do a new version of Gargoyles“, but Disney is said to be sitting on its hands and unlikely to move ahead with the pitch.
“How do you turn down Jordan Peele?,” writes Rushfield. “Well, you can’t. Who wants to be responsible for that decision? So in the absence of a good reason to say no, but prevented by their Big IP box from saying yes, Disney is slow walking the decision. It’s hoping, it seems, that they’ll run out the clock, he’ll sign other deals elsewhere, and the project will just fade away.”
Rushfield goes on to speculate that Peele’s take on Gargoyles may not fit with the Disney ethos, and that the studio sees it as too much of a risk, but is afraid of turning down what could potentially be a great project.
Peele isn’t waiting around for Disney to make a decision however, he’s already working on his next film, which is titled Us and features Lupita Nyong’o (12 Years a Slave), Elisabeth Moss (The Handmaids Tale), and Winston Duke (Black Panther). It is set for release on March 5th 2019.
