No doubt inspired Marvel Studios’ decision to hand The Avengers director Joss Whedon the keys to ‘Phase Two’ of the hugely successful Marvel Cinematic Universe, Twentieth Century Fox has announced today that British comic book writer Mark Millar has signed on to serve as creative consultant on Fox’s own batch of upcoming Marvel movie adaptations.
Millar has extensive experience writing for Marvel Comics titles such as The Ultimates, Civil War and Wolverine: Old Man Logan, and is also the proprietor of Millarworld, which is responsible for titles such as Kick-Ass, Wanted, The Secret Service, Superior and Nemesis. According to a press release issued by the studio earlier today, “Miller will work with Fox on developing new avenues for its X-Men and Fantastic Four tentpoles,” including the upcoming X-Men offerings The Wolverine and X-Men: Days of Future Past, as well as Chronicle director Josh Trank’s 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,” said Millar. “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.”
Fox will be hoping that Millar’s appointment provides a boost to its superhero output, which – outside of the X-Men franchise – has never really managed to shine among stiff competition from the likes of Marvel Studios, Sony and Warner Bros. Only recently, the studio recently failed to get its Daredevil reboot into production in time to prevent the rights reverting back to Marvel Studios, while its proposed Deadpool spin-off seems to have been stuck in development hell from the moment that X-Men Origins: Wolverine workprint first leaked onto the web. However, with the X-Men franchise especially, Fox certainly has the perfect platform to develop its very own shared universe – albeit one with a slightly confusing timeline – and perhaps Millar could be the man to help them achieve just that…
