I've learned to take a lot of the things Mark Millar says with a handful of salt. The talkative creator of Kick-Ass, Wanted, and a number of other projects is notorious for his gift for exaggeration. However when it comes to the film adaptations of his comics work, he's been surprisingly cogent.
We've pretty much known that a sequel to Kick-Ass would be in development sooner rather than later. Millar's been hard at work on the comic book series for awhile now, and even though the film version didn't exactly set the world on fire, it more than made up the approximate $30M price tag. On the Richard Bacon radio show, Millar had this to say about the final numbers and the proposed sequel...
Millar: The estimate is [Kick-Ass] will do 100 to 150 million on DVD based on the American sales, you know, so it’ll end up making a quarter of a billion on a 28 million investment. So It should be okay. So the sequel’s greenlit, we can go ahead and do the follow up now, you know. The first made so much compared to what it cost it would be crazy not to.
So we're to take that as a definite "Go" on Kick-Ass 2, right? I'm still waiting for official word from director Matthew Vaughn on that.
That's not all, though. Millar's most recent project is Nemesis, which we recently learned has Tony Scott attached to direct. When asked about who might star, Millar says that Scott is heavily pursuing both Brad Pitt and Johnny Depp. Wish fulfillment? I mean, who isn't pursuing both those guys for every single film out there right now? Eh, Millar seems pretty confident on it, though...
Millar: Tony Scott, brother of Ridley Scott… I just got a call from him, literally about a month ago… it was one of those very surreal things. This is a $150 million budget… he said “Who do you fancy for it?”… I said “I dunno, Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp” so he said “That’s good, we’ll give them a call”.
That would obviously be one helluva coup to get arguably the two biggest actors working today. Nemesis is the story of a Batman/Bruce Wayne-type figure who uses his vast wealth and intellect for the side of evil rather than good. It sounds like a role I can easily see Depp pursuing and even thriving in.
