If the news had come from Mark Millar’s mouth, I wouldn’t have believed it. After all, this is that same man that stated back in 2008 that he was in line to reboot the Superman film franchise, a bold statement that never came to pass. So him saying that some studio hired him to act as a consultant on their comic book franchises, it would be easy to write off.
Only, this time it’s not Millar saying it, it’s the studio itself. 20th Century Fox announced today that it has hired Millar to act as a “creative consultant” on movies from their studio based on Marvel Comics books. The studio is currently developing the writer’s Nemesis miniseries into a feature film.
This news comes after Joss Whedon has signed on with Marvel in a similar capacity and Warner Brothers rumored to be considering Frank Miller for some involvement with their Justice League film.
Fox currently still owns the rights to the X-Men and Fantastic Four properties, two franchises Millar has written stories featuring for Marvel’s Ultimate Comics imprint. Millar’s friend, director Matthew Vaughn, is currently working on X-Men: Days of Future Past for the studio.
It is not known exactly what Millar will be consulting on. The obvious project would be the Fantastic Four reboot, but rumors are that FOX was so high on Josh Trank’s take on it that they were willing let Daredevil slip back to Marvel rather than let Marvel get their hands on any FF characters. The X-Men franchises seem to be fairly self-sufficient by this point, with the satellite Wolverine and First Class franchises chugging along and Bryan Singer supposedly willing to return to the main franchise. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of consulting work to be done, unless Millar is going to be charged with getting more mutant franchises such as Deadpool up and running. Or maybe he’s just going to be a highly paid information desk, a resource the directors to use. It remains to be seen.
