Last night, Mark Millar tweeted that director/producer Matthew Vaughn had signed on as a producer to Twentieth Century Fox’s Fantastic Four franchise reboot being directed by Chronicle‘s Josh Trank.
Just off the phone with Fox and some excellent news – Matthew Vaughn is producing Josh Trank's Fantastic Four reboot!
— Mark Millar (@mrmarkmillar) February 22, 2013
In addition to Vaughn directing the adaptation of Millar’s comic series Kick Ass, the two are working together on an adaptation of another of Millar’s series, The Secret Service. But things get a bit more incestuous than this. Millar is currently serving as a consultant to Twentieth Century Fox for the Marvel Comics properties that the studio happens to own, specifically the Fantastic Four and X-Men characters. Vaughn has served as director of X-Men: First Class and was set to direct the upcoming follow up X-Men: Days Of Future Past. Though he stepped aside supposedly to work on Secret Service, he is still keeping a producer credit on the film.
Previously, Millar has hinted that as part of his duties as a consultant to Fox was just “figuring out how everything can work together and not contradict each other. But I also don’t want to make it too much of a mess either, with everyone showing up in everyone else’s films.”
Certainly having one producer, who has a definite affinity for comic book material, installed on both franchises would go a long way towards coordinating the two series so they could seemingly co-exist. And is this the first step in a plan that will ultimately see the two superhero teams joining up to defeat some world-threatening menace?
I wonder if Fox is thinking about doing their own shared Marvel universe thing, wih the FF, X-Men, Silver Surfer, Daredevil and whatever other characters are within their license.
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