Comic-book writer Mark is ‘Wanted’ man in Hollywood

Oct 8 2008 by Robert Mitchell, Airdrie & Coatbridge Advertiser

IT’S a long way from Coatbridge to Hollywood but Mark Millar was back in Monklands at the weekend to talk about the journey that has seen him become one of the hottest writers in the movie business.

North Lanarkshire’s Festival of Books and Writing took him to Airdrie’s Sir John Wilson Town Hall for a question and answer session that drew fans of his work from far and wide.

Millar became one of the world’s top comic book creators working on household names like Spiderman and the X-Men, and has now turned that success into a series of creator-owned titles that have producers clamouring for the movie rights.

Wanted – starring Angelina Jolie and James McAvoy – morphed into a summer blockbuster that grossed $300 million at the box office. The bean counters say that will rise to $500m once DVD sales are pocketed, and studio bosses have already agreed to two sequels.

Oscar-winner Nicolas Cage was so attracted to a story called Kick-Ass that filming started on the big-screen adaptation before the comic, about a teenager with no superpowers who puts on a costume to fight crime, was even half way through its run.

Just last week Sony snapped up the rights to War Heroes, a yarn about US soldiers being given superpowers to combat terrorism. A tale called Chosen, about the Second Coming of Christ, is also in development. And on all of these movies, Millar has been brought on board as a producer.

You could be forgiven for thinking that someone with this uncanny run of success, segueing effortlessly from best-selling comic book creator to Hollywood bigshot, would be going through life smelling of roses.

But talking about the first day of shooting on Kick-Ass just a few weeks ago, Millar said: "It’s funny, the first day was in a sewage works. I was thinking hooray for Hollywood, and we were literally driven out to a sewage factory. It stretched for miles, I can't think of anything that’s as big. One of them was open and hadn’t been used in 20 years and that’s what we were shooting inside.”

The film is a real-world take on superheroics, as a teenager with no powers decides to become a costumed hero and tackle street crime. Cage is another vigilante who crosses his path, and has trained his nine-year-old daughter to be a killer in their war against a mob boss.

Matthew Vaughn – who produced Stardust and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels – is behind the $65 million film that will be in cinemas next autumn.

Incredibly, after studios baulked at the script’s violence the entire budget was raised privately from a close circle of Vaughn’s friends, including Brad Pitt.

Millar added: "What’s amazing is studios just didn’t think R-rated superhero movies would work, but then Wanted came out and made $300 million. I was at the Wanted premiere here in Scotland and all my aunties were saying ‘I can’t believe you're doing a film as violent as that, I hope your next one isn’t as bad as that’ and I'm thinking in the back of my mind ‘Oh my God!’ because it takes it to a whole new level.

"Matthew has a deal with Sony and after they did Stardust they said ‘What have you got next?’ and he said he had a superhero property. When they found out every scene had someone being shot in the head or stabbed, and one of the characters was a nine-year-old girl assassin they said ‘Right, we love this but we want to change everything’ and they gave him a list of notes and he just said ‘Right, I'm not going to do it through the studio.’

"Matthew basically phoned up a couple of billionaire mates and said ‘Cough up’ and they trust him so much, he's so good at what he does and they’ve done it so much in the past and made such a lot of money back that they trust him totally.

"In all honesty there was a part of me thinking it’s some kind of joke. Other than a few phone calls and going out for a few drinks with some pals there was no real evidence this was getting made. It was kind of a relief to get on the set on that first day and see Nicolas Cage standing there.”

Millar’s good fortune hasn’t come by chance. From the early 1990s he gradually built up his reputation in the comic book industry until he hit the big time around 2000, when Marvel gave him the chance to put his spin on some of their most popular characters, like Spiderman, the X-Men and the Fantastic Four. His success on those titles enabled him to take control of his career, self-publishing comics that he actually owns and can develop into movie franchises.

"If I write Spiderman it will never be mine. So the idea of going off and doing too much stuff that I will never own is just nuts,” Millar said.

“They'll eventually fire you off Spiderman whereas they can never fire me from Kick-Ass. Over the next seven years I want to have 15 franchises as comic books, but also sold on as films.

“It’s a real learning curve. It was nice to go in as a producer on Wanted and it was actually a cracking experience, but it’s funny how fast you pick things up being around these guys.

“And now with Kick-Ass, I feel really comfortable in that world, and I never had plans to go into movies. As a kid I thought it would be nearly impossible to work in comics because I lived in Coatbridge and Marvel Comics was in New York, but movies always seemed that one step further away because it was in LA.

"Then, Wanted was the biggest-selling creator-owned book of the decade, and Kick-Ass has just overtaken it. That was why the movie of Wanted happened so quickly, they just said ‘Hang on a minute, this thing is selling the same as Spiderman’ and they just buy it as soon as you hit those kind of numbers.“

Aside from the five movies that are atn various stages of development, Millar is also waiting to see if he has snagged his dream job writing the next Superman movie. The original Christopher Reeve film was one of the main reasons he decided to pursue a career writing superhero stories and remains his favourite ever film.

Millar said: "A big director came to me two or three months ago and I sort of had given up on the idea of doing Superman. I had tried for it last year and had got nowhere, but at the moment I gave up on it, I got the call a short time later and he said 'I've been asked to do Superman, I know you're a big fan, do you want to write it?'

"I've no idea, where we are at the moment but they'll make a final decision over the next couple of months, because The Dark Knight is sitting at $970 million right now and they think Superman is a really big untapped franchise.

"So they want Superman up and running by April of next year, so if we're doing it we'll find out in the next couple of months. I'm trying not to get too excited in case it doesn't happen."