We already know that Mark Millar has loved working with Netflix on ‘Millarworld‘ since they bought his company and now the famed creator is opening up a bit on their future collaborations. While the comic division of the company will still be moving forward as we suspect that it is the cinematic take on things that we’ll be most interested in hearing about. Marvel will likely be moving their Netflix properties off of the streaming service once their contract is up or canceling them all together, so this is the studio’s perfect opportunity at expanding their original content.
But the most exciting thing for Millar is what they can do with his creations. With a cinematic movie universe we’d need to see things slowly build up but in the types of streaming television shows that Netflix has been putting together it’ll be a little different:
“This is like being asked to dance by the best-looking person at the party. There’s no more amazing place to be than Netflix right now and no better home for the Millarworld characters. It’s always exciting to see your work in print and amazing to see those stories turned into movies, but this is another level entirely. Let me try to put it in perspective. A big movie studio makes around 30 or 40 hours of original material every year. Netflix has over 1,000 hours of original content this year alone and growing.Had we sold Millarworld to a typical studio we’d have seen some of these franchises trickle out over the course of the next decade. When I walked into my first Netflix meeting the guys were buzzing about the first four or five they want to get moving on as soon as possible. There’s just a completely different way of doing business here and it’s tremendously exciting. I compare it to how Hollywood must have felt in the 1920s. It’s fearless and they’re just charging ahead, which as a creator has the kind of energy I love.”
While the comics aren’t going to be expanding into further publications in the immediate future, it does look as if Netflix is planning on helping to expand into new markets and a push towards more global advertising:
“Now that Millarworld is owned by Netflix the possibilities are off the scale. In publishing terms, we’re being smart and staying at my exact current output, which is around 20 monthly comics a year or four graphic novel collections. This means we can really focus on promoting each book and use Netflix’s massive international machine. Their presence is just ridiculous. We’re announcing a new book this weekend and it almost feels like we’re announcing a movie. The amount of thought and the number of people behind this is unlike anything I’ve experienced in over 20 years as a comic-book creator. Again, this is next-level stuff and our plan is to have a range of books backed up by this incredible PR machine backed up by this amazing resource, which is the highest quality movies and TV shows we can do. But publishing is just a part of what Millarworld is doing at Netflix, the idea being that I’m just constantly creating new stories and these are being exploited in lots of different mediums, as we’ll explain over the coming months.”
So some of what is going down the pipe and how it may change will be revealed soon. It sounds as if they’ve got some big ideas in the works but how they’ll be delivered and received by audiences remains to be seen. There are a couple of changes at the company Millar does share though:
“Well, this first book we’re launching is coming in Spring and you’ll hear about that at the weekend. This comes out of a brand new project I’ve created in-house and I’ve asked pretty much the best artist in the industry right now if he’d like to draw the comic-book. Now that Millarworld is owned by Netflix it’s a pretty different set-up than before. I’m creating stories directly for Netflix, to be used as movies or TV shows, but some of them are going to be comic-books too following the same stories and design bibles. I’m not going to own them. I’m on-staff and this is all being done in-house, but because I love doing comics we’re taking the ones that will work great in my own traditional medium and just letting me have some fun with them. As you can imagine, all the best artists are very, very keen to work for Netflix too so I’ve really had my pick of the crop here. I’ve finished this series we’re announcing at the weekend and already on a second project. The first is a completely original piece of work, the other a sequel to one of our existing franchises people really liked a couple of years back. Both artists are people I google in my tea-breaks. You’ll smile when you see who we’ve bagged.”
It isn’t clear if just his work is no longer creator-owned or anything that comes through Millarworld. I suspect anyone that comes into the company as a writer going forward won’t own the rights to what they create. However, with a focus on making content that could easily be adapted for other media means we could see a lot of work that is a bit more grounded in nature.
One thing that hasn’t changed is that Millar is still pretty much writing full time and the main writer for anything Millarworld created. However, “part of the deal” is that he and his wife would “come on as employees for a number of years” so you have to expect that more writing talent is going to be brought on board in the upcoming years but for now:
“No, it’s just me in terms of stories and, in comic terms, whoever we think would work best as the artists. We’re all work-for-hire going forward, like Marvel or DC, but obviously, this has the most incredible potential for everybody involved as Netflix doesn’t really go into anything half-cocked. I’ve been doing this job since I was nineteen and I’ve never been more excited about where this is going to go. The resources I have around me are like nothing I’ve ever experienced and I think something special is brewing here as Millarworld just gets a reach we could never have managed.”
While ‘Kingsman’ and ‘Kick-Ass’ are off the table from previous arrangements, it will be interesting to see which parts of Millarworld show up next on the streaming service. That is one area where the creator is staying quiet, but he is promising that there will be “a lot of brand new stuff too on top of the franchises you’ve already seen.” The studio had picked up 17 pre-existing franchises in Millarworld and Millar would “like to create that many again too for Netflix.”
While next year is likely too soon to see any of these characters evolve onto the streaming platform, it’s only a matter of time.
Which Netflix series of Millar’s existing properties would you like to see happen first? Share your thoughts below!
Source: Comic Book
