Who Wants To Write for Marvel?

If you long to turn your keyboard to a Marvel movie script, you might actually get your chance. According to Variety, Marvel Entertainment is getting ready to assemble an army of screenwriters to be at their beck and call, and develop properties for their characters -- and with 5,000 in the stable, there will be no shortage of work.

While they'll be looking to their current comic staffers, Marvel also wants to bring on five new writers every year to develop whatever pitch the studio throws at them. They're particularly interested in finding people who can help them launch lesser known characters like Doctor Strange, Black Panther, Cable, Iron Fist, Nighthawk, and Vision.

As we speak, the first group is being recruited, and will be expected to tackle projects this year. Don't be surprised if it's one of the guys name-dropped above, as it wasn't that long ago that Kevin Feige was putting Doctor Strange on the to-do list.

Marvel is borrowing a page from the Disney model, but you can't blame them for getting an assembly line going, and striking while the iron is hot. If you're exhausted by it all, you can blame it on Iron Man, who rose from second-tier status to being everyone's favorite hero. (Seriously, if you can win my mom over, you've succeeded.*)

Now, I'm off to go churn out some writing samples of my own ... your loss, Simon Beaufoy, Wolverine 2 is mine!

(*As I headed off to write this, she was reading the latest issue of The Invincible Iron Man. She flung it down when Prince Namor showed up, and said she'd be embarrassed to claim me as her own if I wrote his movie.)