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Mark Millar’s Idea for ‘Superman’
By Landfill | September 17, 2009
I’m not sure if any of our readers were aware but Mark Millar (Kick-Ass, Wanted) has a strong passion to do a Superman movie. He’d been going to Warner Bros. pitching his idea hoping to get a shot at the next project that involved The last son of Krypton. Continue with the article to read about his idea for Superman and some recent quotes from Mark.
Millar’s idea was to be an 8 hour long epic spread over 3 films like Lord of the Rings and would be released a year apart. The films were to chronicle Kal-El’s life from Krypton to a 1000 years later being the only person left on Earth.
“It’s gonna be like Michael Corleone in the Godfather films, the entire story from beginning to end, you see where he starts, how he becomes who he becomes, and where that takes him. The Dark Knight showed you can take a comic book property and make a serious film, and I think the studios are ready to listen to bigger ideas now.”
The problem with Superman Returns was like releasing Star Wars in ’77, The Empire Strikes Back in ’80 and then waiting 28 years to release Return of the Jedi, it wasn’t relevant. I understand what Bryan Singer was trying to do, to pay homage to Richard Donner’s original vision, but I think you should pay homage by doing something completely different.”
“I want to start on Krypton, a thousand years ago, and end with Superman alone on Planet Earth, the last being left on the planet, as the yellow sun turns red and starts to supernova, and he loses his powers.”
Millar also said he had a big Hollywood action director in mind for his vision, someone who already had their foot in the door at Warner Bros. and that director was Matthew Vaughn (Kick-Ass, Stardust). the plan was, “To do a Superman movie unlike anything you’ve ever seen before. Matthew wanted to cast someone who looked nothing like Christopher Reeve and create a new Superman for this generation. But Superman is still in stasis at the moment because the last one lost so much money and [Warners] are scared to do anything with the character right now. I’m not holding my breath.”
It was reported that Millar got turned down because he was working with Marvel. “Well, sadly, I’m a Marvel guy and we were surprised to find out that WB couldn’t hire me for a DC property. They were incredibly nice and superbly apologetic about it, but when they discussed the matter seriously DC explained just how associated I am with Marvel Comics at the moment and it’s against company policy to hire the competition. It’s absolutely nothing personal.”
Millar hasn’t said anything more about the Superman project other than the revelation of Matthew Vaughn as his director. A few days ago he spoke with MTV about his idea. “I don’t think [Warners] could afford me now, I’ll stick with Marvel.”
It’s true that Superman Returns didn’t make the money WB thought it would make. I think the numbers were barely positive. I think one for this is because they tacked on all the prior budgets from earlier efforts to get Superman flying again. The Tim Burton project from the 90’s that had Nicolas Cage as Superman is a great example of one of these prior budgets.
I like Millar’s idea and I had heard the original plan for Bryan Singer was a trilogy that would lead up to a Justice League film. Don’t hold me to that last part but I know for a fact Singer was supposed to be around for at least another film.
Back to Millar, I’m thinking his idea might have cost too much to produce to WB really didn’t want to see the life and death of Superman in just three films. It’s possible they didn’t want to start production on a film they’d lose money on if the Superman Legal Battle were to end early and all rights would revert back to the Segal/Shuster Families.
I wouldn’t worry too much for Mark Millar since he’s currently very busy now with Kick-Ass coming out in April of next year along with the Wanted sequel getting ready to start sometime in the near future. it’s very possible Millar doesn’t even have time to think about The Last Son of Krypton right now.
Would you like to see Millar’s 8 hour Superman story on film? Tell us what you think in the comments.
Sources: Empire Online, MTV, SHH.com
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