By: Jay Carlson – Editor-in-chief

As we’re all ready to nestle up Quentin Tarantino’s Hateful Eight this Christmas, the director speaks about a ghost of Christmas past. Namely a film version of Marvel’s Luke Cage.

“One of the things I wanted to do before Pulp Fiction to some degree or another…one of the outside projects that I considered doing was doing a Luke Cage movie.”

“In the case of Luke Cage, it was my comic geek friends that almost talked me out of it, because I thought Larry Fishburne back in the day would’ve been a great Luke Cage, and they were talking about Wesley Snipes. And I could see them both, but it was like ‘I think Fish would be better.’ And they go ‘Yeah…he could work out and everything, but he doesn’t have the bod that Wesley Snipes has, and Luke Cage needs to have the bod.’

“And I literally was so turned off that that would be their both starting and ending point, that it literally put it in my head that, if I do a comic book movie, it should be an original character. It should be something I create rather than try to fit in.”

Even though we’ll never see Tarantino’s take on Luke Cage, we can still look forward to Mike Coulter reprising the role in his own sure-to-be gritty Netflix show in 2016. (Coulter first appeared as Luke Cage on Netflix’s Jessica Jones series)

Add this one to the pile of Tarantino films that could have had the Tarantino touch along with his take on Friday the 13^th, James Bond, etc. Boy, I feel like he could have made a terrific throwback exploitation version of Luke Cage. Set it in the 70’s and really let him go wild.

Imagine the soundtrack…