Marvel Comics impresario Stan Lee is no stranger to the big screen, having made increasingly elaborate cameos in all of the movies spun off the back of his colourful creations. But despite becoming a movie producer who’s banked more box office than Steven Spielberg, the man who brought the X-Men and Spider-Man to the world has never gotten to play a superhero himself. But all that is about to change with the news that the 93-year-old’s life is going to be turned into an action-packed movie by 20th Century Fox.
Eschewing the typical path worn by the average biopic, The Hollywood Reporter claims the 1970s-set action movie will tell the comic-book mogul’s life story while also featuring his fictional alter ego, a 007-inspired superspy. The film will take its cues from Roger Moore’s tenure as James Bond, with the reports it will ape the style of the recent hit Kingsman.
Lee will be played by an as-yet-uncast actor, but is expected to make a cameo appearance himself.
Born Stanley Lieber, Lee grew up in poverty in the Bronx in New York and fell into the comic book publishing industry at the age of 17 when it took up a role working for his uncle at Timely Comics in 1939. Aspiring to become a writer and published the ‘great American novel’, Lee’s wife Joan (who also cameoed with him in this summer’s X-Men Apocalypse) convinced him to give comic books one last shot, leading to the creation of The Fantastic Four, a franchise that launched the Marvel brand.
Together with artists Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, Lee helped create Spider-Man, Doctor Strange, Iron Man, the Hulk, and hundreds of other characters that breathed new life into a dwindling publishing house and indelibly changed pop culture forever.
