Inspired by what Marvel did with The Incredible Hulk and completely turned off by what Bryan Singer and his writing team did with Superman Returns… comic book writer Mark Millar (Wanted) is aiming to retcon the red, white and blue character giving him a refreshing restart if Warner Bros. agree to his planned pitch.
He also mentions that the superhero property which he is planning his big presentation to the studio, now has a director attached which he will reveal closer to Christmas time.
“Since I was a kid I’ve always wanted to reinvent Superman for the 21st century,” said Millar. “I’ve been planning this my entire life. I’ve got my director and producer set up, and it’ll be 2011. This is how far ahead you have to think. The Superman brand is toxic after that last movie lost [a good chunk of change], but in 2011 we’re hoping to restart it. Sadly I can’t say who the director is, but we may make it official by Christmas.”
I don’t think it’s the worst idea at all. Let’s forget Superman Returns ever happened ala Ang Lee’s Hulk.
Knowing that his quotes to the Daily Record would spread like wildfire over the Internet, Millar was quick to elaborate on his personal message board…
“PS: That Superman news is interesting, isn’t it? In the interests of clarity (because I’m sure this will be picked up somewhere) a very well known American action director heard about my love of Superman, approached my and asked me to team up with he and his producer to make a pitch for this. We’ve been talking for several weeks now and, if this is going to happen, we’ll know by Christmas. He has huge pull at WB so fingers crossed. But this is nothing more than a huge US name pulling me into his fold and making me part of a package.”
Though I would keep Brandon Routh, I think if he were given the right material – he could be a really great Superman… just whatever you do you gotta make sure you do it right this time. Because two failures, especially a failure after a retcon would mean a shelving of this character all too soon after it’s last gathering of dust.
Who to direct then, who is this mysterious “well known American action director”. Any thoughts? The thought of Michael Bay came to mind straight away… don’t like that idea at all. The only other guy I can think of is Tony Scott. Now that WOULD be interesting.
source – /film
6 Comments
I can only hope whichever director he’s talking about will know how to do Superman justice and is on top of what Millar is doing if things work out for them.
The only reason that Superman Returns lost money is because it spent over a decade in development, meaning that something like $40 million had been spent before a frame of footage had been shot.
Plenty of people saw it, just not enough to offset the insanely high final final costs. If it had cost $100-120 million, it would have turned a healthy profit. No retconning or rethinks are actually necessary, just a sensible budget.
well, for me, what sucked mainly in SR was the script. everything else self-destructed on purpose because of the flawed substandard script.
plot-wise, there could’ve been better ways to attack the story’s premise of Superman coming back to Earth after re-visiting Krypton. that premise was inevitable, given that it’s been like ages since the last Superman big-screen adaptation.
whoever was in charge of SR… they shouldn’t have focused too much on the drama, y’know. there’s supposed to be a striking balance between the drama and the action for any movie for that matter.
too much action sequences and less plot substance is a ginormous no-no for a moviegoer like myself (think Michael Bay’s Transformers).
still regarding the script… the dialogues in Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns really sucked; and I just thought that actor Brandon Routh could’ve done a better job as Supes IF ONLY he were given substantial and effective lines.
As for the villains… c’mon, I’m so tired of Lex. Explore other baddies in the Superman multiverse, right?
Actually, in the first place, Kevin Spacey was a downright poor (if not totally lame) casting choice to portray Lex, in my humble opinion. He was like giving Superman the campy twist which totally sucks.
I just hope whoever’s gonna be in charge of resuscitating this disenfranchised movie would learn from Singer’s mistakes.
IF this is true (I’ve just read about how Millar manufactured the rumor that Eminem would star in WANTED purely as smoke to hype the movie), then the mystery director is Michael Bay. Bay was willing and ready to direct SUPERMAN in 2005, to the point that he was so sure it was his next picture he had the ‘S’ shield posted as an update to his blog…before WB announced Bryan Singer instead.
There’s no getting round it, that film STUNK like a big pile of KAK!
I’m keeping my fingers crossed for Millar! His vision of Superman brought to the screen would be awesome! It would also make tonnes of cash and save the franchise in all likeliness!
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[...] posts at /film and Obssessed with Film have me spinning my wheels this morning, wondering just who in the heck has approached comic scribe [...]
[...] Now if you cast your mind back a few months, Mark Millar came out of nowhere to tell us that he had been approached by a very famous American director who was mostly known for action films, asking Millar to write a script for a new Superman reboot. [...]