More From Mark Millar on His Scottish Superhero Movie
Posted 03.05.10 by Ryan
Last month, Scottish comic book writer Mark Millar, who wrote the comics that became Wanted and Kick-Ass, admitted he is entering the world of writing and directing with a new superhero movie to be shot exclusively in Scotland. In an interview with STV, Millar explained that writing comics is similar to directing a movie.
Comics is an amazing training ground for directing. It's so similar, because as a comic writer people think you just
put the balloons in, but really you've a blank piece of paper and you
have to tell the story visually: start with a close-up, pull-back and
all the wee tricks that we employ when we make a film as well, so it
felt quite seamless actually, the idea of going into film.
Millar says he was inspired by movies like District 9 to try his hand at setting a superhero movie in his native country.
I thought that that was quite interesting to see something that people
don't associate with South Africa, which is alien invasions, to
juxtapose two things and make something quite interesting and quite
odd, and I thought "wouldn't it be cool to do a superhero movie in
Scotland. "
So my plan is to start directing that in June, June
and July. We're prepping it just now. We want to do it with an entirely
new cast, people nobody have seen before, young people from Glasgow and
Edinburgh and work with local teams. Everyone that works on the movie
we want to try and keep Scottish and just create a superhero movie with
its own unique flavor.
Millar is keeping the details on his superhero movie quiet, though he did reveal some plot details in an interview with Herald Scotland.
I want to make a 21st-century Trainspotting kind of thing about people
with superpowers and make it epic, make it big and grand in scope. It will be done totally straight and will
be a team of five teenage super-heroes each with superpowers in the
west of Scotland. You won't think you're watching a superhero film but
then something amazing will happen and it will be quite shocking. You
will see someone moving at superspeed or someone flying through Glasgow
city centre. People will be taken aback.
Millar is independently financing the movie, which he told STV will help him from having to compromise, which he learned while Wanted was in production.
It was funny because they phoned me up and said "You know this thing you're doing, Wanted,
we really like it but we'd like to radically change it, we want to
change half of it. I was just so pleased at the idea of getting a film
made I was just like "Yeah, anything you want! Of course." The first hour's identical, then it goes off and does its own thing and then comes back again at the end to being like the book.
You compromise in film, it's just the way it goes. It's a collaborative process and everybody's
got an opinion, and if you do something in the studio system you have
to defer sometimes.