Before Samuel L. Jackson played Nick Fury in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, there were rumors that George Clooney was considered to play the Marvel superspy and legendary comic book creator Garth Ennis weighs in on the rumor that his 2001 Fury miniseries was the reason the actor turned down the part. Now best known for creating The Boys comic series, in 2001, Ennis launched Fury as part of the Marvel Comics MAX line that was meant to appeal to more mature audiences. The comic was controversial because of how gory and violent it was, and it may have prevented Clooney from taking on the role.
In an interview with Comic Book Herald (via Screenrant), Ennis spoke about his comics' rumored role in the star's decision, if it was ever true at all, as no Nick Fury movie was ever confirmed to be in development at the time and it has never been confirmed by Clooney or Marvel that the actor was ever offered the part. Ennis doubts his 2001 comic series would have ever influenced a Marvel superhero movie. Ennis said:
“If it’s true that (Clooney) decided against playing Nick Fury on the basis of that Fury book that I did with Darick (Robertson) - which is still one of my favorites, by the way - I would find that highly amusing and entertaining. But also I wonder if it might have been more that… perhaps someone said to him, some advisor or other, ‘You don’t want to go near this.’...It’s very hard to believe that, were there to have been a Nick Fury movie at that time, it would have remotely resembled anything that I wrote."
Nick Fury at the Movies
While the Marvel age of film would not kick off until 1998 with the release of Blade and then be followed up by 2000's X-Men and 2002's Spider-Man, a few early attempts in the 1990s never got wide theatrical releases.
1990's Captain America was sent straight to video in the United States, Roger Corman's 1994 Fantastic Four was never intended for release, and in 1998, David Hasselhoff played Nick Fury in a television movie named Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. Despite Hasselfhoff signing on for more television movies, those plans never materialized.
In 2004, just one year before Marvel Studios launched, Marvel unveiled a schedule of planned films from various studios. Many of the films on the board never happened, including Namor and Deathlock. In contrast, others were drastically reworked into eventually becoming Marvel Cinematic Universe movies like Iron Man and Captain America. One of the titles was Fury, so this might have been when George Clooney was being considered for Nick Fury.
In 2006, Castle creator Andrew W. Marlowe was hired to pen a script for a Nick Fury film. The movie supposedly drew from Jim Steranko's Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. series as opposed to Ennis' Fury, but the movie never materialized.
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Nick Fury: Remembering the Weird Made-for-TV Movie Bomb from The Dark Knight Writer
A decade before the MCU, David Hasselhoff and Man of Steel writer David Goyer created an odd TV movie, Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.
In 2005, Marvel Studios was formed, and they would put up the film rights to ten franchises as collateral; Nick Fury was one of them. In 2006, while filming Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, director Tim Story wanted to include the character of Nick Fury in the script and base him on the Ultimate Comics universe version modeled after Samuel Jackson. Story was denied access to Nick Fury and created the character of General Hager, played by actor Andre Braugher.
Story says the reason Marvel denied him Nick Fury was that the company reportedly had plans for the character, and even though Andrew W. Marlowe wrote a Nick Fury script at this time, it appears Marvel was beginning their plans to build a shared universe. Nick Fury would be the center point as in 2008 when Samuel L. Jackson played Nick Fury in the post-credit scene for Iron Man.
Interestingly, the same year Ennis's Fury comic hit the shelves, so did Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch The Ultimates, who introduced Nick Fury, which the MCU would later adapt.
While Clooney might have been considered for a Nick Fury role for a brief window of time, by the time the Marvel Cinematic Universe was in development, the studio had plans for Ultimate Nick Fury as opposed to the classic Marvel Comics 616 version. Jackson has since played Nick Fury in ten additional Marvel Cinematic Universe movies, two guest spots on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and the Disney+ series Secret Invasion.
