#Steven Soderbergh Won’t Direct a Superhero Movie, But He’s Not Being a Snob About It

Filmmaker Steven Soderbergh has earned a great deal of acclaim throughout his career for movies like the Ocean’s Eleven franchise, Erin Brockovich, Contagion, and Logan Lucky. But so far, Soderbergh has stayed away from the superhero movie genre. There were rumors once that the filmmaker was interested in making a Fantastic Four movie. Addressing those rumors during an episode of the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Soderbergh explained why he feels he would not do a good job on a superhero movie.

“I wouldn’t have said [no to making a superhero movie] just because I just didn’t read that stuff growing up. Yeah, I think you really need to love it. And like I said, you need to be one of those people that want to go stand in line for it. I just wasn’t that person. And I would be second guessing. I would be doing exactly what I was talking about before. I wouldn’t know where North is because it just wasn’t it wasn’t part of my, you know, bag of interests growing up. So… I don’t I don’t know, I’m not a snob. I like all kinds of stuff. I just want to do a good job when I go to work. And I would honestly feel unable to do a good job. An Ocean’s movie is as close as I can get to kind of, you know, a superhero movie, or something that has slightly outsized activity in it.”

There was a time when making a superhero movie was considered a step down for prestige filmmakers. While that thinking appears to be changing with films like The Dark Knight, Logan, and Joker winning great critical acclaim, Soderbergh clearly feels he is not cut out for making the kind of film that a superhero story usually entails.

While Soderbergh was never invested in the world of comic books, he mentioned that he is a big fan of spy movies, particularly the James Bond series. So much so that he was once in line to direct a film in the franchise, until talks fell through.

“Absolutely, I love that world [of spies]. [The James Bond movie producers and I] were at odds about some things that were important. We had some great conversations. It was fun to think about, but we just couldn’t… the last ten yards were, we just couldn’t do it, we couldn’t figure it out… Aspects of [my take on James Bond] have shown up elsewhere. I would say, there are things in Haywire, in terms of its approach to the character, and it’s not a big movie, but there’s a little bit of activity in it. That’s a hint of the kind of attitude I was looking for.”

While Soderbergh appears satisfied making smaller films, and leaving the big, spectacle movies in the superhero and spy genres to other filmmakers, it would be interesting to see what he could do with a story set in those genres on a more intimate scale, maybe something along the lines of Joker or The Bourne Identity. This comes from Happy Sad Confused.