By now you should all be somewhat familiar with Mark Millar. He’s the author behind the graphic novel Kick Ass which I’m sure you remember from earlier this year, as well as the recently optioned Nemesis about an extra evil super villain. Now, there’s interest in another one of Millar’s properties, Superior, coming from two mysterious parties that Millar himself is keeping veiled in shadow until deals go through. However, in a recent blog post he does give a few hints about who each is:
One of them I absolutely love and this is definitely in his comfort zone. The other was a curve-ball, a producer who has worked on lots of big family movies with the director he's proposing, but strangely has never done a superhero flick before. This is what happened with Timur on Wanted, Matthew on Kick-Ass and most recently Tony Scott when he bought Nemesis to direct. Some guys are just perfectly suited for the superhero genre, but somehow never quite connected when something was available.
Superior is Millar’s most recent series, only just getting started this month, and it’s a bit of a take on the Superman archetype. The real story here is that while there are two competing parties chasing after the rights to Superior, both of them have the same actor in mind to play the lead role: Jon Hamm. Hamm is going to be huge whether he gets this role or not. He's become an instant icon as the suave but broken Don Draper on Mad Men and has just delivered a stellar performance on the big screen for Ben Affleck’s The Town. His superhero qualities are innate, as the actor already is a bit too large and good looking for his own good. So of course he’d be perfect to play a Superman-type character.
This obviously is not confirmed casting, but Hamm is always a good sport and judging by his hilarious appearances on SNL and 30 Rock the 39-year-old actor is up for just about anything that scheduling will allow. Expect to hear more details about this adaptation very soon.
Here is a description of the series from Mark Millar himself in an interview he gave to Comic Book Resource:
The basic idea behind Superior is about a kid who's been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis getting a magic wish for whatever he desires. And his wish is to become the big screen superhero he's always loved. This superhero is a tip of the hat to all the golden age greats, a romantic character slightly out of time, whom the modern world doesn't have much interest in. He's been around for decades, in comics, movies, television shows and lunchboxes, but nobody cares anymore. They've just tried rebooting him with a big new movie, but even this underperforms and he's almost a forgotten character. He's an American icon, but tied to an America that's been left behind. It struck me as interesting to have this character, who was created in the Depression, essentially appear now in a very bleak economic time in the real world. Like his creation back in the 30s, he appears just when America needs him most. So we have this really quite charming notion of a little boy who's granted a magic wish giving America her confidence back again. It's actually a very emotional story. It's got massive action set-pieces, super-villains, aliens, robots and all the things you might expect, but at its core, it's a morality fable.
