Last night, Mark Millar tweeted that director/producer Matthew Vaughn had signed on as a producer to Twentieth Century Fox’s Fantastic Four franchise reboot being directed by Chronicle‘s Josh Trank.

Just off the phone with Fox and some excellent news – Matthew Vaughn is producing Josh Trank’s Fantastic Four reboot!

— Mark Millar (@mrmarkmillar) February 22, 2013

In addition to Vaughn directing the adaptation of Millar’s comic series Kick Ass, the two are working together on an adaptation of another of Millar’s series, The Secret Service. But things get a bit more incestuous than this. Millar is currently serving as a consultant to Twentieth Century Fox for the Marvel Comics properties that the studio happens to own, specifically the Fantastic Four and X-Men characters. Vaughn has served as director of X-Men: First Class and was set to direct the upcoming follow up X-Men: Days Of Future Past. Though he stepped aside supposedly to work on Secret Service, he is still keeping a producer credit on the film.

Previously, Millar has hinted that as part of his duties as a consultant to Fox was just “figuring out how everything can work together and not contradict each other. But I also don’t want to make it too much of a mess either, with everyone showing up in everyone else’s films.”

Certainly having one producer, who has a definite affinity for comic book material, installed on both franchises would go a long way towards coordinating the two series so they could seemingly co-exist. And is this the first step in a plan that will ultimately see the two superhero teams joining up to defeat some world-threatening menace?

JJ Abrams’s all-but-confirmed appointment to the director’s chair of Star Wars: Episode VII brings a close to one facet of speculation around the upcoming film. But it does open up another avenue of speculation that could be limitless – what kind of film would the other directors rumored to have been considered for the position made?

One director that was rumored to be on Disney’s shortlist of choices was X-Men: First Class’s Matthew Vaughn. At the time he stated that he was in the process of prepping The Secret Service, based on the comic book series created by Mark Millar, and that he wouldn’t be available.

But Bleeding Cool is reporting that Millar did meet with Lucasfilm head honcho Kathy Kennedy to discuss the possibility of directing Episode VII and that those discussions had progressed far enough that he supposedly pitched Kennedy on the idea of Kick Ass actress Chloe Moretz for a lead role in the film.

Now there are lots to extrapolate from that little nugget and much of it is contradictory. Is there a strong female lead in the screenplay that writer Michael Arndt is crafting? Or perhaps he had an idea for a female lead character that he wanted to add into the already planned out story. Vaughn has been known to take a strong hand in the scripting of his films, so I wouldn’t rule out the possibility here.

I am sure that there are some out there that will, with no actual reason to, use this as support for their hope that the new films will recognize the continuity built up in the Expanded Universe of Star Wars comics and novels and that Moretz would have been playing Jaina Solo, one of Han Solo and Princess Leia’s three children. Of course, if Moretz was being pitched for a role that would have been the child of one of the original Star Wars trilogy characters, this could conceivably have thrown the entire Expanded Universe into the trash.

But with the choice of Abrams for director, I suspect that we should be hearing some solid casting news sooner rather than later and from that we may be better able to extrapolate what Moretz’s role might have been if Vaugh had taken the job.

When word first broke of Disney’s purchase of Lucasfilm and the plan to start producing a new trilogy of Star Wars films, one of the first people rumored to be in consideration for the daunting assignment of directing one of the films was Matthew Vaughn. His name was quickly drawn out of consideration though, by his frequent collaborator, writer Mark Millar, stating that the two were trying to move fast and get another project into motion before any imitators beat them to it.

But might Millar be back in the mix? Actor Jason Flemyng seems to think so. Flemyng has worked on, by his count, nine films that Vaughn has either directed or produced and so probably has a good report with the director. While doing the red carpet thing, Flemyng was asked about the upcoming trilogy and answered in a way that definitely implied that Vaughn would be the one behind the camera calling the shots.

Honestly, I think the veracity of this one is open to interpretation. Flemyng could be telling the truth or he could just be goofing around a bit, it is hard to tell from his demeanor. For right now, I am going to place it in the “Possible” column. But if he did let slip with the truth, where does that leave The Secret Service, the project he and Millar were so keen to get moving on?

I imagine that Disney won’t wait to make an announcement once they have finally inked a deal with whomever they decide to go with, so hopefully we’ll have an answer to all of this speculation soon.

Mark Millar is a one man industry these days. Not only is working on a number of independent comic book titles, he is consulting with Twentieth Century Fox on their Marvel Comic adaptations as well as overseeing the film adaptations of his own work. On that front he currently has Kick Ass 2 in production in England and an adaptation of his mini-series Superior being developed by the director of the first Kick Ass, Matthew Vaughn. Another comic mini-series, Supercrooks, is being developed by director Nacho Vigalondo. Meanwhile, Universal has reportedly fast-tracked a follow-up to their 2008 adaptation of Millar’s Wanted mini-series.

Another film he is working on is his adaptation of his comic series The Secret Service. In the book Millar, and artist Dave Gibbons, focus on a mix of spies, adventure and a dash of social commentary. Vaughn is developing this film as well, having left the director’s chair for X-Men: Days Of Future Past last month in order to fully concentrate on this.

Over the weekend, Millar was talking with fans on twitter about his many projects and mentioned that the Secret Service film adaptation won’t a one-off project but the start of a planned franchise.

A comic usually takes me 2 weeks but about 70% through the extra-sized finale of Secret Service in 5 days. V pleased with it.

— Mark Millar (@mrmarkmillar) November 16, 2012

Note: The Secret Service comic is a franchise. The movie will HOPEFULLY be a franchise too, but we need to see how it performs first.

— Mark Millar (@mrmarkmillar) November 16, 2012

Dave Gibbons and I planning to do one of these every two or three years, same as the movie adaptations. Casting is INSPIRED by the way.

— Mark Millar (@mrmarkmillar) November 16, 2012

Although he did not elaborate on how the casting was inspired, he did knock down one guess from a fan.

@scottydisnyknow Ben Drew is a brilliant actor. Loved him in Harry Brown. But he’s not who we have as Gary in Secret Service.

— Mark Millar (@mrmarkmillar) November 16, 2012

(Ben Drew has been in a small handful of British crime dramas, of which only Harry Brown, starring Michael Caine, have gotten any substantial distribution here in the US.)

Lots of good times ahead if you’re a Mark Millar fan. Let’s hope he doesn’t burn himself out with all this work.

We don’t know much concrete about Disney’s announced Star Wars: Episode 7* but we do know that if they expect to make their announced 2015 release, they will have to start nailing down key creator positions relatively quickly.

To that end, Collider thinks that they have an idea as to who might occupy the most important jobs of all on the film – the director. The website is reporting from unnamed sources within Lucasfilm/Disney that Kick Ass and X-Men: First Class director Matthew Vaughn may be in talks to helm the first of the new trilogy. The site stated that they have not yet been able to verify the story with a second source and as such should be considered a rumor at this stage.

But taking a look at what may be circumstantial evidence and a convincing case starts to emerge.

Two weeks ago, Vaughn abruptly dropped out of directing X-Men: Days Of Future Past, the follow up to his X-Men: First Class. It seemed like a bit of a head scratcher of a move at the time. The studio was happy enough with his work on First Class and presumably was giving him more of a free hand to proceed with the sequel than they might have done on First Class. That freedom was potentially further expanded with the news that notorious micromanager studio chief Tom Rothman was leaving.

The stated reason for Vaughn’s departure was so that he could move over to reteam with the co-creator of the Kick Ass comic book series, Mark Millar, on another Millar comics-based project Secret Service. But is it possible that Vaughn was actually just freeing up his scheduled? Would you drop what ever you are working on for the chance to direct a Star Wars movie?

For right now, let’s consider this all conjuncture, though. There’s lots of rumors flying around and we’ll have the truth eventually.

Via Collider.

*Man, that’s still a weird group of words to write.

It’s not hard to get a reputation in Hollywood. All you have to do is become known for doing the same thing over and over again. Like, say, agreeing to direct X-Men: The Last Stand then walking away and leaving the producers to scramble to find a replacement. Or, be in talks to do Thor, then back out and leave the producers scrambling for a replacement. Or, agreeing to direct X-Men: Days of Future Past then back out and leave producers scrambling for a replacement.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present you with Matthew Vaughn, the director who changes his mind about directing superhero movies.

Deadline is reporting that  Vaughn has decided to back away from directing the sequel to 2011 X-Men: First Class. He will be staying on board as a producer and he did write the treatment for the film.

He will be keeping number of comic book adaptations he has done even with the ones he had passed on, as he is trading Days of Future Past in for an adaptation of his friend Mark Millar’s Secret Service comic book. Millar, if you recall correctly, was hired by Fox, the studio home to both Days of Future Past and Secret Service, to act as a consultant on Fox’s Marvel films to make the whole process run smoother. Glad to see that is working out so well.

This change of heart puts Fox into a bit of a bind, as it has given a firm July 18, 2014 release date for Days of Future Past. Deadline believes any problems caused by this will be mitigated by having the film’s producer, Bryan Singer, return to directing the X-Men franchise by taking over the reigns of the sequel.

The situation, as they say, is developing.

Marvel Comics, in its haste to get its properties on the big screen, made a lot of ”use them or lose them” deals regarding the rights, meaning that the film studios would keep the rights as long as they kept making films featuring the Marvel characters. This was good at first because it resulted in a lot of great films by top name directors. But now that Marvel is owned by Disney, a company that knows a thing or two about films, you get the sense that the powers that be wish that some of these properties will come back into the fold.

Fox owns the rights to the X-Men and just about all of Marvel’s mutants, the Fantastic Four and Daredevil. The studio is keeping a stranglehold on the lucrative X-Men rights, always having at least one X-film in development at all times. However, Deadline reports that there has been some action on the Daredevil and Fantastic Four fronts, news that might result in one of the properties reverting back to Marvel.

Deadline states that Chronicle director Josh Trank has been officially named by Fox as helming the Fantastic Four reboot. The FF reboot is on the fast track, meaning that it is expected to be the next Marvel film to come from the studio after The Wolverine and Matthew Vaughn’s X-Men: First Class sequel and it will be the much in demand Trank’s next film. It has been five years since 2007′s Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, and while the FF were a financial success for Fox, it was far from a success with the critics. Hopefully, this reboot will address that.

2003′s Daredevil was a similar box-office success yet a critical disappointment, and Fox has been looking to reboot that franchise as well. Since we are approaching ten years since that film came out (time flies, doesn’t it?), if Fox doesn’t act soon, the rights to Ol’ Hornhead will revert back to Marvel. And a recent development might mean that we could see Daredevil’s lawyer alter ego Matt Murdock representing Mark Ruffalo’s Bruce Banner or Robert Downey Jr’s Tony Stark in the near future.

David Slade has dropped out of the reboot over time constraints. Fox needs the new Daredevil film to start production in the fall to avoid the rights going back to Marvel and Slade, who is directing the pilot for NBC’s Hannibal series, cannot find time in his schedule to work within Fox’s. There is a script that the studio likes and is ready to go, but Fox needs to find a new director that is ready to get started quickly and get a project up and running by the times the leaves turn. It could happen, but considering that Fox chose Brett Ratner as a last-minute replacement for Bryan Singer and Matthew Vaughn on X-Men: The Last Stand, I don’t trust Fox’s judgement on finding replacement directors who can get a project up and running quickly. It might be better to just let Marvel take over.

New line Cinema is taking another run at bringing the Vertigo comic book Y: The Last Man to the big screen. The studio is in final negotiations with writing duo Matthew Federman and Stephen Scaia to script a brand new screenplay for the project.

Created by writer Brian Vaughn and artist Pai Guerra, the 60-issue series centered on Yorick, a young escape artist who wakens one day to find that he and his pet Capuchin monkey Ampersand are the only survivors of a mysterious plague that has killed ever other male mammal on the planet. As he sets off on a cross-country trip to find his girlfriend, he finds himself pursued by a number of groups with various agendas. The series was noted by critics for using its fantastic storyline as a means of exploring gender-related issues.

Ferdeman and Scaia’s background is in genre television having served as writer producers on Human Target, Warehouse 13, Jericho and the recent quickly cancelled Charlie’s Angels reboot. They have also scripted a Zorro origin film that is currently sitting at Sony waiting for a greenlight.

New Line has been trying for several years to turn the five-time Eisner Award winning series with director DJ Caruso. Carl Ellsworth worked on polishing a screenplay originally written by Vaughn and Jeff Vintar did some further work. Shia LaBeouf was Caruso’s first choice for Yorick, though the actor wasn’t interested as he thought the character was too similar to his Sam Whitwicky character in the Transformer films. Caruso continually butted heads with New Line executives who wanted a single film where the director saw the project as a trilogy. He would walk away in the fall of 2010.

It is unknown if New Line is holding firm on making this a single film or if they have now have come around to thinking that the material is better suited to a series of films.

Via Hollywood Reporter.

The Hollywood Reporter is announcing that 20th Century Fox has “closed deals” with director Matthew Vaughn his cast from X-Men: First Class to return for its sequel.

The 2011 film would be considered a disappointment if you just look at domestic grosses ($146,408,305 against a $160 million budget), but it more than made its money back overseas (to the tune of $207,215,819 more).

The report takes pains to point out that the two actors most likely to bolt from the franchise–Michael Fassbender and Jennifer Lawrence–have definitely signed on to return. Both expressed interest in reprising their roles from the first film in the past past, but Fassbender, who is just coming out of a year where he was in serious contention for an Oscar nomination, and Lawrence, who has a potentially lucrative franchise in The Hunger Games on deck, could just as easily decided to move on to other projects. It’s good to seem them back, especially Fassbender. I couldn’t see a sequel working without him as Magneto.

As to what the plot would be about, Vaughn spoke about what he would like from a sequel before the first film was even in theaters:

 ”I’ve got some ideas for the opening for the next film.  I thought it would be fun to open with the Kennedy Assassination, and we reveal that the magic bullet was controlled by Magneto.  That would explain the physics of it, and we see that he’s pissed off because Kennedy took all the credit for saving the world and mutants weren’t even mentioned.  And we could go from there, and I’ve got some fun ideas about what other mutants to bring in.  I don’t want to tempt fate, though.  If the film’s a hit, of course I’d be interested.  I really enjoyed making it.”

Of course, not everything is rosy with the sequel. Simon Kinberg, who wrote the less than well received X-Men: Last Stand, will be writing the sequel, and one assumes that January Jones, the weakest link in the original cast, will also be returning as Emma Frost. I don’t know if I can stomach another film of her “acting.”

Check back for more news on this sequel as it becomes availiable.

When I first saw the two new posters released by Twentieth Century Fox for their upcoming X-Men: First Class, I dismissed them on first glance as nothing more than something put together by an overly-enthusiastic, if under-talented, fanboy. You see a lot of these online all the time.

But when I realized that they were actual posters released by Fox, I was flabbergasted. These are undoubtedly the ugliest and most incompetently designed posters I have seen from a major studio since the poorly executed “Julia Roberts’ head on some other woman’s body” poster for Pretty Woman.

I understand what the advertising is trying to do here, teasing potential ticket buyers with the promise of the backstory of Professor Xavier and the villain Magneto from the original X-Men trilogy. And if they were just the black silhouettes on the white background, they would look really great. It’s a very visually arresting look. But how could the ham-fisted addition of James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender’s faces in the middle of their respective silhouette have been approved by a variety of marketing and design professionals?

I can only surmise that the order came down from some studio head without a design background and who has the rest of the studio in such fear of them that no one was able to point out how crappy these looked.

That studio executive should be fired immediately.

And if it wasn’t some rule-by-fear suit who pushed these ugly posters through Fox’s marketing department and out into the world but the actual work of the marketing department itself, then they should be the ones looking for new employment.

Now I’ll admit that I am no design expert, but my ex-wife worked in the field and I managed to pick up a few things along the way. But even without any formalized or informal training, one can see that these posters are about as aesthetically unappealing as it can get. They’re just two images dumped willy-nilly on top of each other with no thought as to composition or how the eye would track across them. Rather than excite someone for the film, this sloppy, unprofessional work gives the impression that Fox doesn’t really care about the film. And if they can’t be bothered to put some effort into promoting the film, why should I be bothered to see it?

It’s no secret that Twentieth Century Fox has long been mishandling the X-Men franchise. Their rush to get X-Men 3 into theaters was fueled more by hurt egos over director Bryan Singer moving on to do Superman Returns than it had to do with anything else. X-Men Origins: Wolverine did not try to tell a solid, compelling story so much as it pandered to the fan boy audience. It may have been a success at the box office, despite the studio crying that a workprint of the film leaked online was going to financially hurt them, but Wolverine was a failure as a film. Most recently, many people, me included, were disappointed and puzzled that the studio didn’t spring to advertise X-Men: First Class during the Super Bowl.

Up until now I have been cautiously optimistic about X-Men: First Class, mostly due to director Matthew Vaughn being on the project and the decision to set the film in the early 1960s. I’m also excited at the idea of someone like Black Swan‘s Darren Aronofsky directing a new Wolverine film for Fox. These are some interesting and bold choices that could lead to some pretty good to even great films. We just have to hope that Fox management doesn’t screw things up. Further.