In a parallel universe, Quentin Tarantino directed a Luke Cage comic book movie, with Laurence Fishburne as the titular Hero For Hire and the film coming out at around the same Pulp Fiction did in our version of reality.

Alas - or, rather, fortunately - in reality he made his narrative-bending masterpiece instead, but there was a time where QT was definitely considering it, as he revealed to MTV.com in this video (which, annoyingly, only US residents will be able to see).

If you're from somewhere else in the world, here's a transcript of what the Django Unchained director had to say about the might-have-been Marvel adaptation:

"After Reservoir Dogs, I had considered doing a Luke Cage, Hero For Hire movie. [Producer] Ed Pressman owned the rights at that time, and we talked about it. I talked to Larry Fish [Laurence Fishburne] about being Luke Cage, and he really liked that idea. Then I ended up writing Pulp Fiction. "

Any chance he'd go back to the world of comic book heroes? "My feeling is if I wanted to do something like that, I'd want to create the superhero myself," he says.

So there you have it, another chin-scratching "Hmm..." story to file alongside James Cameron's Jurassic Park, Tim Burton's Superman and Del Toro's The Hobbit. 

And as Tarantino told this tale whilst on Django Unchained press duties, here's his spaghetti southern's UK release date: January 18, 2013, as well as our review of it.