Mark Millar Says 'Kick-Ass 2' Is Greenlit; Wants Brad Pitt And Johnny Depp In The Mix For 'Nemesis'

Oh, Mark Millar. It's come to the point where I don't really believe anything the comics writer says. Or I can't take it at face value, at least. The guy loves to talk, especially when it comes to 'news' about the film adaptations of his comics. Today Millar is talking about the prospects for Kick-Ass 2 which, based on a literal interpretation of his most recent comment, is ready to go forward. And he's namedropping Brad Pitt and Johnny Depp in relation to the adaptation of his "what if Bruce Wayne was a dick?" series Nemesis.

Here's what Millar said about Kick-Ass 2 whilst appearing today on BBC Radio Five Live. Transcription by Bleeding Cool, and thanks to io9 for the heads-up.

The estimate is [Kick-Ass] will do 100 to 150 million on DVD based on the American sales, you know, so it'll end up making a quarter of a billion on a 28 million investment. So It should be okay. So the sequel's greenlit, we can go ahead and do the follow up now, you know. The first made so much compared to what it cost it would be crazy not to.

Given that the worldwide theatrical gross for Kick-Ass is still slightly under $100m, those numbers seem awfully optimistic.

And, strictly speaking, the film being greenlit means that there's a script in place from which a budget could be based. Based on what we know, that's not the case. And Matthew Vaughn (director, writer) and Jane Goldman (co-writer) are kinda busy with that little X-Men movie for Fox.

Millar did tell MTV in an interview that ran today,

We're probably about nine months away from production starting, at the earliest, because Matthew [Vaughn]'s got to do 'X-Men: First Class,'...Matthew just wants to get 'X-Men' done next year then hopefully we'll just go straight into 'Kick-Ass 2,' that's the plan.

That's a lot more balanced and realistic. I'd go with that comment over the BBC greenlit one. So: still taking hard and fast Kick-Ass 2 news with a big grain of salt. That green light sounds like it is really "yeah, we still want to do it." (And yeah, that's an image from the Kick-Ass 2 comic at the head of this article, which also comes from that MTV piece.)

Meanwhile, Millar also said this to the BBC today:

Tony Scott, brother of Ridley Scott... I just got a call from him, literally about a month ago... it was one of those very surreal things. This is a $150 million budget... he said "Who do you fancy for it?"... I said "I dunno, Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp" so he said "That's good, we'll give them a call."

Scott is attached to direct, remember, and while Millar is calling Nemesis a serious triple-A picture, what are the chances of that really happening? After Kick-Ass and Scott Pilgrim and the general sense of comic/movie fatigue, it's hard to see Nemesis happening on the scale envisioned by Millar. So, again, not totally convinced here. Let's wait and see how this really shakes out.