August 8, 2010 Director Matthew Vaughn (Kick-Ass) recently said that he agreed to direct X-Men: First Class because he thinks superhero movies will be dead soon. The cultural window for comic-book based movies may be closing as a result of too much a good thing, but the gravy train doesn’t look like it’s stopping any time soon, because another comic series has just been optioned. It’s been announced that rights to make Mark Millar‘s over the top villain centered comic ‘Nemesis’ have been optioned by 20th Century Fox, with Tony Scott (Top Gun) set to direct.
For those unfamiliar with the series, it focuses on sort of a negative Batman (all the money and toys, but none of the morality) who is the worlds only super villain.
Here’s what Millar had to say about Nemesis last year:
What if this genius billionaire was just this total shit, and the only thing that stood between him and a city was the cops? It’s Batman versus Commissioner Gordon, in a weird way. Or maybe a super-villain version of Se7en. A billionaire anarchist up against ordinary people. The Joker’s the best thing in the Batman movies, so this guy is a bit of an amalgamation of all the stuff we like.
Nemesis is the world’s smartest man, and the bad news for us is that he’s the world’s only super-villain. That means he’s got freeze guns and jump-jets and all these James Bond gadgets and he’s using them against us. To entertain himself, he picks a different cop every year and makes his life a misery. The book opens with him fucking over Japan’s top cop, and then our story, the mini-series, takes place as he shifts his attention to Washington and his first American attacks.
A cool concept. Villains are the characters that fascinate us the most. So, it’s genius to have a comic-book that is solely from the bad guys perspective. However, ‘Nemesis’ the comic has received less than warm reviews. Fans are praising the idea, but are being critical of the execution. I haven’t read it, but from what I hear it’s not funny, it’s not exciting and not interesting. With the negative reaction from the comic community and with the comic only being two issue deep it comes as a surprise that a movie would be in the works.I suppose with the success of Dexter, everyone’s favorite good guy cereal killer, FOX sees the same kind of potential in ‘Nemesis’.
As of right FOX has yet to put a writer on the project and with director Tony Scott deep in a number of projects it doesn’t seem production will be happening any time soon.
Courtesy of: http://nerdbastards.com/2010/08/08/fox-and-tony-scott-to-make-movie-version-of-mark-millars-nemesislar/
