Mark Millar Defends His Superman Reboot Connection
Posted 02.26.10 by BrentJS
One of the biggest movie news items of the week is the report from LatinoReview that David S. Goyer, co-writer of Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, has been hired by Thomas Tull, president & CEO of Legendary Pictures, the production company behind both the Batman and Superman franchises, to write the screenplay for a new Superman movie. It is also one of the most controversial.
Almost immediately after the story broke, it was picked up by dozens of movie news sites, most of which took the story as completely factual. However, Harry Knowles, AICN's infamous Hollywood insider, claimed that he had spoken with Tull personally and that LatinoReview's story wasn't entirely true. Now, there is at least one more detractor to the story, though he's not taking issue with Goyer's attachment as screenwriter.
Writer Mark Millar, creator of the comic books that inspired the movies Wanted and Kick-Ass, has been publicly lobbying for the job of writing a reboot of Superman since 2007. Millar envisioned an epic trilogy of Superman movies showing Superman's entire life story, "like Michael Corleone in the Godfather films." Millar said that, because of his exclusive contract with Marvel at the time, DC Comics and Warner Bros. showed "no interest" in him, but said that they were interested in Kick-Ass director Matthew Vaughn. Recently, he said that he wouldn't be interested in writing a Superman reboot even if he was asked because he doesn't care for studio oversight and he feels the franchise is "a little bit toxic."
Having put his dreams of writing the exploits of Superman for the silver screen behind him, what really made Millar mad about the LatinoReview article was not Goyer's involvement, or even that the supposed title of Goyer's movie, The Man of Steel, is nearly identical to his title, Superman: The Man of Steel, but the fact that the article claimed that his story was "bullsh*t" and that Millar "was never even discussed to write it." Millar responded to the allegations in his personal forum.
Awesome for Goyer. He's a brilliant writer and a mate of mine so feel this could not be in better hands.
But I must stress that the "inside info" on my relationship to the movie is nonsense. I've said on record that WB had direct and serious talks with Vaughn and Vaughn was only doing it if we did it together. This didn't work out and we're doing something else, but the notion that it's fiction is insane. I can say on record that Vaughn had meetings with them about our ideas over a year ago.
I can't stand these massive declarations coming from "unknown sources."