Launched May 2010 with the intriguing tagline What if Batman was the Joker, Mark Millar and Steve McNiven's 'Nemesis' comic was an interesting, conscious and ultra violent (and sometimes downright disturbing) spin on the Batman mythos. Published by Icon Comics (an imprint of Marvel) but creator-owned, the four issue mini-series followed the terrorist son of a murdered rich couple who uses his vast wealth to wage war on the police chief he holds responsible for his parents death, with the entire world caught in the middle of his struggle. As seems to be the case with all of Millar's work post-Wanted, the film rights were quickly picked up before the full series hit the stands. In this case 20th Century Fox optioned the film rights with action veteran Tony Scott (Top Gun, True Romance) attached to direct. Not longer after Scott's attachment the likes of Denzel Washington (a Scott regular obviously), Brad Pitt and Johnny Depp were rumoured (some of which fuelled by Millar) for the starring roles. The film project was fast tracked with screenwriter Matthew Michael Carnahan (Lions For Lambs, the upcoming World War Z), brother of A-Team director Joe Carnahan, brought in to adapt the book, which suffered from massive delays in its release schedule. Then... radio silence. Now, Bleeding Cool reports that the movie's future might be in the balance, citing tweets today between Matthew Carnahan and Mark Millar as evidence. The first, from Carnahan in a reply to an earlier tweet by Millar, read:
@mrmarkmillar Mark, my brother and I were going to adapt NEMESIS at Fox and it got fucked off! We were waiting for you to finish the series
Millars reply:
@carnojoe Seriously? That's hilarious. Follow me so I can DM you.
That was the only correspondence so we can assume they went to talk about it privately. Plus, we can presume 'fucked off' is an angry way of saying 'it's dead'. What we get from this is that while Tony Scott was indeed attached, it may have been only briefly before the reins were handed over to Joe Carnahan. Fox, or the Caranahan's, probably wanted to see the series story in full before going ahead (unlike what happened with Millar's last property-to-film Kick-Ass which Matthew Vaughn and Jane Goldman took off in their own direction based on early Millar issues) but now that the series has finished, and has been published for nearly a year now, just what's stopping the movie from going ahead?