Mark Millar on 'Jupiter's Legacy' and What's Next From Millarworld

Mark Millar

Author, President & Chief Creative Officer, Millarworld

This has to be the greatest superhero story of all time.

When I started work on Jupiter's Legacy in 2012, this was the first line I wrote in my notepad - a high bar to set before coming up with a single line of dialogue.

After a decade of writing comic books, I knew I wanted to go out on my own and I knew I wanted to tell a different kind of superhero story. When I started working on Jupiter's Legacy, my wife and I just had our second baby and family stories were suddenly more interesting to me. You don't see many stories about superheroes with kids. I thought, "What would it be like if somebody as cool as Superman married somebody as amazing as Wonder Woman and they had kids?" That's a fascinating dynamic, and it would be especially difficult for the children to live up to their parents' expectations and legacies.

I was inspired and began writing scribbled scenes and Post-It notes for two full months, creating an entire universe of characters and how they all related to one another. My office looked like a scene from Zodiac, diagrams everywhere and arrows pointing to characters who might only appear briefly, but 30 years of backstory worked out in more intimate detail than I know some of my best friends.

When my wife, Lucy, and I sold Millarworld to Netflix in 2017, our first priority was Jupiter's Legacy. We had flirted with the idea of a movie, but Netflix afforded us the chance to make this adaptation as big and deep as it needed to be, all those scribbled notes and Post-Its fully realised into a series that wouldn't need to be condensed into a three-act film.

Although I've seen cut after cut, I've never once grown tired of watching what this dream cast and crew have assembled. I hope you love it as much as I do.

As I get ready to share this work with the world, I also wanted to give an update on where we are with some of our projects. We are being thoughtful and deliberate, taking our time in building out each story organically. Our slate is curated to feature a wide variety of content - but you'll feel the Millarworld DNA in all of them -- always through an "artist" and "fan-first" lens.

First let's start with some news:

We're hard at work on a six-episode live-action spy series right now, my first since Kingsman, but a very different kind of property. The writer is someone I've been a massive fan of for two decades, and he was the only person I approached. This has the potential to be one of the biggest franchises I've ever created. I'm so excited and I hope you will be too!

I'm also happy to share that The Magic Order is in active development after we had to postpone due to all the uncertainty last year. Some time away has given us a chance to come back with a completely fresh look at the material, and we should be getting into our new writers' room very shortly. I created it to be a live-action series, but as comic fans know, I'm also passionate about doing books. I'm excited to report that we have The Magic Order volume 2 launching in October by the legendary Stuart Immonen and volume 3 immediately afterwards by the sensational European artist Gigi Cavenago.

The development for American Jesus is coming along beautifully in the talented and capable hands of Everardo Gout (Marvel's Luke Cage, Sacred Lies) and Leopoldo Gout (Molly's Game, Instinct). I'm blown away by the creative choices that Netflix has allowed us, and particularly since this series will feature Spanish and English dialogue.

We're excited for the world to see the anime adaptation of Super Crooks later this year. This superpowered heist comic about eight super-villains is jam-packed with action and told in 13 30-minute episodes lushly produced by Bones.inc (My Hero Academia, Mob Psycho 100, Godzilla Singular Point). Fans will be able to catch the first glimpse of this highly anticipated series at the Annecy Festival this June.

On the film side, Reborn is currently being written by Bek Smith, who came out of the Marvel Writing Program. We've tapped Chris McKay (The Lego Batman Movie) to direct and Sandra Bullock will produce along with Vertigo Entertainment. Empress, Huck, and Sharkey The Bounty Hunter continue to move forward with all three features in various stages of development. And we have also added Prodigy to the slate with a phenomenal script by Matthew and Ryan Firpo (Marvel's The Eternals).

Stay tuned for more!