Kick-Ass and Wanted have already hit the big screen and Kick-Ass 2, Nemesis and Superior are all expected to follow pretty soon. Basically, Mark Millar is a very busy man right now. His latest project, Supercrooks has just been announced, and here are a few excerpts from an upcoming issue of 'CLiNT' featuring both comic book creator Mark Millar and the movie adaptations director Nacho Vigalondo talking about the upcoming project. To read more, be sure to pick up the magazine when it's released and head on over to Comic Book Resources by clicking on the link below.
On The Concept Of Supercrooks:
Supercrooks is such a simple idea – the guy that runs Marvel, Dan Buckley, said to me once “You’re the master of the obvious idea”, and it took me about an hour to figure out that it was an insult. Kick-Ass is one of those stories that is kind of obvious, it’s about what would happen if somebody without super powers in the real world tried to become a superhero. This is another one of those really simple concepts – all the superheroes live in America, so why do the supervillains always commit crimes in Metropolis, Gotham City, or Star City? Why don’t they just go somewhere where there are no superheroes? It would make life an awful lot easier for them. I remember thinking that if I was the Joker or the Mirror Master or someone, I think I’d head for somewhere like Glasgow, where the worst thing that will happen is being chased by a fat cop. That’s the idea of it really, only I thought I’d make it a bit more exotic, so I ended up making it Spain instead. So a bunch of supervillains head for Spain for one last job, for a heist. And I love heist movies – I’ve always wanted to do a ‘men on a mission’ story with supervillains. So the idea is a bunch of super-villains get together to pull off one last job; the biggest job of their career.
On Selling The Movie Rights Before The Comic Book Was Even Written:
Well, this was quite weird, it happened at Kapow Comic-con. I wasn’t going to announce this until next year, but we ended up having a gap in the schedule because we ended up not announcing the Dave Gibbons project. We had this panel where we said we were announcing something, but we didn’t have anything to announce! So Leinil drew the cover [to Supercrooks] for me that morning - he put the advert together in an hour on his iPad. Then we plugged [the iPad] into the panel at Kapow and the image popped up, and everybody seemed to really like it. We needed something to plug the gap, but it went viral and everybody started talking about it online. Universal Studios has some spies at Kapow, there was a studio presence that I knew about and there were people that I didn’t know about. So Universal heard about it, got in touch on the Wednesday and bought it that night! It was absolutely crazy! It’s such a ridiculous story but it’s absolutely true.
Director Nacho Vigalondo on Deciding To Work With Mark Millar:
There is a very simple answer to that question – I was a fan of his work! We come from the same universe, we think of things in the same way, because he comes from comic books and I come from Spanish indie films, which exist in parallel realities. But I have been into comic books for all my life; in fact I think that somehow I am a comic book guy before I am a movie guy. I feel very close to [Mark] because my ideal is making movies that feel special somehow, they try to be unique at some point, what they never forget is to try to be as much fun as possible. I am terrified of boring people! For me boring people is the worst thing! I can feel that level of energy from Mark Millar books.
