Lea Thompson says Marvel Studios actually liked her Howard The Duck reboot pitch

Earlier this month, Lea Thompson saw that Howard The Duck was trending on Twitter, so she wrote, “What if I get to direct [a Howard The Duck] Marvel reboot?” Turns out, she wasn’t kidding about the offer to finally give us a good onscreen version of the alien duck’s story.

During an oral history of the infamously terrible flick done with The Hollywood Reporter to celebrate the film’s 35th anniversary, it was revealed that Thompson actually sent that tweet mid-interview. She was inspired by the cult classic status of the ‘80s movie. And she did actually get to pitch her vision for a new Howard The Duck story to Marvel Studios. “Joe Quinones did some of the art for the pitch because he and Chip Zdarsky did the last run of Howard The Duck comic book. Chip and I worked together and came up with a really great pitch,” she said. “Marvel liked the pitch, but they have different plans for the different characters. I still think I could do a really good job because I feel like I am the one who really understands the fans, both of the movie and the cartoon.”

So, as Thompson explains, Marvel Studios were impressed, but they don’t want to give Howard The Duck his time to shine in the MCU just yet. That’s why the actor decided to tweet about her goal to direct a remake. It was an attempt to gauge how many people would be into the character getting his own standalone film following his appearances in Guardians Of The Galaxy and Avengers: Endgame.

The oral history also offers some interesting factoids about the making of the notorious film, including that Robin Williams was originally cast as the voice of the eponymous duck, but he quit within the first week because it was seemingly impossible to sync his voice with the duck’s animatronic bill. “What I was told was by the third day, Robin said, ‘I can’t do this. It is insane. I can’t get the rhythm of this. I am being confined. I am being handcuffed in order to match the flapping duck’s bill’,” recalled Chip Zien, who wound up taking over for Williams and voicing Howard instead.