Any comics fan watching the year's biggest film - the Avengers - can't fail to have noticed a whole slew of plot points and characterisations from The Ultimates, Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch's reinvention of the superhero team for Marvel which was hailed at the closest thing to 'cinematic' story-telling on the printed page.
Well, our old friend Millar - also the scribe behind Old Man Logan, Kick-Ass, Hit Girl, Superior, Red Son, Wanted, Nemesis, The Secret Service and many others - has now been officially brought on board as a creative consultant for Twentieth Century Fox, helping shape several upcoming projects, according to industry site Deadline..
Twentieth Century Fox's production President Emma Watts said in a statement that: "...we are excited to be working with Mark. In addition to his groundbreaking Marvel work, he is simply one of the most original voices in comics today and will be an invaluable resource to us and to our filmmakers as we look for fresh opportunities to innovate within our shared Marvel universe.”
The news comes only a few weeks after Joss Whedon began a somewhat similar role as a guiding hand over at Marvel Studios. Millar will be helping Fox (which still owns the rights to several Marvel main characters) co-ordinate their over-all strategy. It could be a busy time as Fox have The Wolverine, the X-Men prequel-sequel Days of Future Past and a possible Fantastic Four reboot.
“As someone who has spent his entire life obsessed with both comic-books and movies, this is essentially my dream gig as it’s a unique combination of both,” Millar said as the deal was announced. “I spent ten years working at Marvel and am really happy with the work I did on the comic side of things so the idea of working with these characters now in a brand new medium is enormously exciting for me. I really like the Fox team, love this bold new direction they have for their franchises and am proud to be working alongside some of modern cinema’s biggest talents. James Mangold is incredible, Matthew Vaughn’s one of my closest pals and Josh Trank gave us, in my opinion, one of the greatest superhero movies of the last decade with Chronicle. The invitation to join this crew was maybe the coolest phone-call I’ve ever had.”
The recent specualtion that Fox and Marvel Studios might come to some sort of agreement on sharing some of the respective characters they own in cinematic projects, doesn't look particularly close for the time being.