Zero Dark Thirty Writer On Why He's Unlikely To Make A Marvel-Style Blockbuster Anytime Soon

Mark Boal, the former journalist who wrote the Oscar-winning writer who won two Oscars for the Bin Laden movie Zero Dark Thirty, has shared his thoughts on the big Marvel-style Hollywood blockbusters. Appearing on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, Boal was asked if a studio has ever come to him asking him to write a giant blockbuster.

"Nobody ever f**king asked me that, no, they never do," he said.

The closest Boal has ever come to something like this was some script-doctoring work he did, though he didn't name any projects specifically. That said, Boal said he enjoys these jobs--which can involving punching up dialogue or helping fix the third act, for example--because they pay "crazy good money." But Boal has never been asked to work on a massive IP like Spider-Man, for example.

"Nobody has ever said, 'Here's our prized piece of IP, here's like Spider-Man, we want you to shepherd it through.' No," he said. "They don't need that, they don't want that."

Zero Dark Thirty was made on a production budget of $40 million, Boal said, noting that Megan Ellison wrote a check and paid the bill herself. As such, the movie was made like an independent film, Boal said, and this helped the crew, including himself and director Kathryn Bigelow, stay true to their vision without much outside studio influence. But the bigger a budget a movie has, the more money it needs to make to recoup its costs, and this can lead to issues involving creative expression, Boal said.

"If I'm running one of those companies, I wouldn't hire me," he said.

Big studios like Marvel have a "playbook" for their films, Boal said, and they want to keep the formula the same to create the highest likelihood of a positive return on investment. If Boal were to make a movie on this scale, he might pitch changes that a studio wouldn't necessarily agree with.

"We have a playbook. It's worked every f**king time, and we're going to do the same playbook again," Boal said an executive from a big studio might tell him.

"I'd like, yeah, but can't we change it up and what if we made it more realistic. What if we tried to make it more authentic. They'd be like, 'Bro, we are selling toys for kids,'" Boal said.

There are exceptions, of course, as Boal pointed out that Christopher Nolan--a director he said has "insane artistic chops"--did a great job with the Batman movie The Dark Knight. This is unusual, however, Boal said.

"Those systems, they are factories. Those are really industrial projects, when you go and watch a Marvel movie. There is a limit to how much any one filmmaker or writer can really change what [a big studio] is trying to do with their product. So it's ultimately--the money is great--but it's ultimately not that interesting," he explained.

Boal broke out in Hollywood with 2008's The Hurt Locker, which was based in part by his own experiences covering the war in Iraq. Boal won two Academy Awards for the film. He went on to write 2012's Zero Dark Thirty, picking up two Oscar nominations for it. Later credits included Detroit and Triple Frontier. His latest work is the thriller series Echo 3 for Apple TV+.