If you’re a fan of Mark Millar and his Millarworld comic books, then the next few years could be good to you, with numerous titles in various stages of development for the big screen treatment, including The Secret Service, Starlight, MPH and Kindergarten Heroes and American Jesus. On top of that, there’s also an adaptation of Millar and Steve McNiven’s ultra-violent cult series Nemesis on the cards from director Joe Carnahan (The Grey), who took over the reigns following the passing of Tony Scott. However, during an interview with MoviePilot (via ComicBookTherapy), Carnahan has indicated that we might have some time to wait before we see the film – if we see it at all, that is…
“I think the biggest challenge with Nemesis is that it’s just a motherf*cker of screenplay in that it pushes a lot of buttons and does things that both expand and violate the traditional mores of the ‘comic book adaptation’ and that’s a scary conceit when The Dark Knight is considered the socio-political lynchpin of that particular universe. I think Nemesis f*cks with the genre in such a thumb-in-the-eye fashion that it might simply be something for another time and place. It’s incredibly topical and remains infuriatingly so. I chalk it up to another really wonderful script that my brother and I wrote that simply may be too smart-assed for its own good… My brother {Matthew Carnahan] and I took our real inspiration from Nemesis in the fact that only one character, the bad guy, wore a costume. From their it deviates from the source material in a number of ways but what remains alive and well is Millar’s simmering disdain for the status quo and the relentless violence that characterizes the graphic novel.”
Should Nemesis fail to get the greenlight, it wouldn’t be the first comic book movie to fall apart for Carnahan; he was also attached to Fox’s planned reboot of Daredevil, but the studio was unable to get it off the ground before their option expired and the right reverted back to Marvel Studios (who are now bringing The Man Without Fear to Netflix). Carnahan also went on to offer up some insight as to his plans for the movie:
“What people don’t realize about the DD project is that the producers of the film, got to me very late. They had a script that I read and I thought that while the action was wonderful, the story didn’t really have any additional bite. There was nothing. I suggested a trilogy as follows. ‘Daredevil ‘73’ ‘Daredevil ‘79’ and ‘Daredevil ‘85’ where I was going to do a kind of ‘cultural libretto’ and make the music of those eras a kind of thematic arc . So the first one would be Classic Rock, the second one would be Punk Rock and the third film would be ‘New Wave.’ The problem was, the option was almost set to lapse so we made an eleventh hour bid to Marvel to retain the rights for a bit longer so I could rework the script. Unfortunately, it just didn’t happen. Marvel wanted the rights back. I don’t blame them.”
For a taste of how Carnahan’s Daredevil could have shaped up, be sure to check out his pre-production sizzle reels here.
Originally published May 8, 2014. Updated April 12, 2018.
