After it was announced over the weekend that Tony Scott would direct an adap of Mark Miller's ultra violent(aren't they all?) new comic book, Empire got teh Scottish writer on the phone to ask him all about it...
"Tony Scott is the ultimate comic book director who’s never made a comic book movie. For fifteen years people have been asking him to [make a comic book movie], but he’s turned it all down because the material never really excited him. The one thing you can’t say about Tony’s stuff is that it’s not family-friendly, safe fun. He’s never going to do a Fantastic Four or a Spider-Man. But the minute he saw something with Air Force One being taken down, the President being taken hostage and Japanese skyscrapers falling down, it began to look more like a Tony Scott movie."
What Miller is describing happens in the first couple of issuers of Nemesis for those who haven't read it. It deals with an all-in-white (Super) Villain wreaking havoc all across the city in an attempt to bring down his target, the world's top cop. Ambitious stuff..
"You couldn’t do a movie like this any cheaper than $150 million," said Millar.
"It's going to go really big."
And what about a couple of big name actors to draw those crowds?
"With Nemesis, you’ve got two great roles for two A-list stars. The thing is, one guy has to be as good as the other. You’ve got Holmes versus Moriarty here or Batman versus The Joker, so each one has got to be a $20 million actor, really. I think you could go for the A+ list and get Johnny Depp as Nemesis and Brad Pitt as Blake Morrow."
"When I was writing the comic, I genuinely saw Johnny Depp as Nemesis. He’s a thin-faced guy, slightly creepy, a cross between Heath Ledger and Christian Bale, and someone who could pull off both those things at the same time is Depp. He would get it. He goes slightly crazy in his roles!"
And Pitt for Morrow?
"He's Commissioner Gordon meets Sherlock Holmes, so it’s got to be a big physical policeman who you feel could stand up for himself in a physical fight, It’s got to be somebody who can take a punch. You couldn’t really get anybody who’s too cerebral. He’d have to be a very physical actor so it would need to be a Pitt. Or maybe even a Liam Neeson."
Ambitious indeed. What would you guys think of these cast choices?
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Mark Cassidy is a writer, photographer, amateur filmmaker, and Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic from Dublin, Ireland.