If any of you have read any of my other posts then I imagine you’re aware that I’m a big fan of comic creator Mark Millar. So it will come as no shock to you that hearing Millar was to be involved in future Marvel movies, produced by 20th Century Fox, made me very excited. Soon after the news was revealed by the Hollywood Reporter Mark took to his forum, at millarworld.tv, and had this to say (among the boat load of thank yous):
It’s way too early to talk about plans just yet, but as you can imagine the idea here is to make exactly the kind of superhero movies you and I want to see most. There literally isn’t a more talented bunch of film-makers to be working with and the team at Fox are incredibly excited about this bold new direction too. I also want to post this here to say thanks for the hundreds of emails I woke up to this morning and the thousand-plus tweets I got overnight from well-wishers. I wish I had time to reply to them all today – I usually reply to most of my tweets @mrmarkmillar – but this morning was an AVALANCHE and so I just wanted to say a big thanks, that I’ve read every one and that they’re hugely appreciated. A highlight, I think, was well-wishes from Stan The Man himself. That’s like the Pope sending a message. Couldn’t have been more exciting.
Millar has a good history where Marvel are concerned and if you haven’t yet read any of Mark’s Marvel books then I strongly recommend you do; The Ultimates, Civil War and Ultimate X-Men are just some highlights. Hopefully he will be able to use his influence to bring some of that hard grittiness to the future movies, but only time will tell on that. As for right now it seems that some of Mark’s views that have come to light in recent days could have very interesting repercussions for the entirety of the Marvel movie franchise.
The major bug bare for all of us comic book fans is the apparent lack of connection between the movies produced by different production companies. The reason for this is that unlike the comics, different and competing movie production companies own different rights to make movies featuring the different Marvel characters; this was the main reason that Wolverine and Spider-Man were not in The Avengers movie, Grrrrrrrrrrr. This means that unless someone can bang all of their heads together and make them work with one another we are never going to get the definitive Marvel movies we want. In a recent interview in the October 17th issue of SFX Mark had this to say:-
Fox have said that they want to build a cohesive universe and I’d personally like this to work in complement to the Marvel one. It would be cool if these universes didn’t contradict each other so if you went to see Spidey, The Avengers, the X-Men, etc, as a viewer you would have no idea that all three are coming from different studios. I’d love to make it look like they’re all just happening in one place.
I don’t think it’s something anyone would want to rush into. Following that Marvel model, we want to establish things first. If you had a Fantastic Four re-launch, and Wolverine and the X-Men were in it, I think it would distract you from the Fantastic Four. You can make people aware that they’re existing in the same universe without making it a big crossover movie but it would be an injustice to the Fantastic Four not to make their first movie all about them.
This is nothing but good news. If all of the movies/universes could be brought in line then the prospects of companies working together to make some amazing crossover films is a hell of a lot more probable. I for one would love to see the Avengers going to Mr Fantastic for some help with science stuff, or Cap giving Spidy some advice on how not to be such a whinge ass all of the time. That kind of thing is easy in the comics and should be just as easy in the movie universe, for the fans sake, so here’s hoping that Mark can set the right wheels in motion to sort it. Millar has the friends and connections to influence some major changes within the Marvel movie world so I guess anything is possible. Fingers crossed and breath held. So, best of luck to Mr Mark Millar, not that he’ll need it, and for the last word I will hand back to the man himself:-
Right. Work. Catch you all later and I promise you are in for an awesome few years. If you’re on this board you know how much I’m INTO this stuff.
Lotsa love,
MM
About Jay Martin
Jay has been nerdy now for a little under 30 years, so it was only natural for him to aide others in their neediness through his writing. A big fan of comics, movies, TV, music, toys and anything else his pay check will stretch too, this Star Wars addict has an impressive collection of lightsabers and is currently working his way through the extended universe novels in order. If you like your reviews with a healthy dose of sarcasm he is the man for you.
