Netflix buys Millarworld: What to expect!
Since I follow Mark Millar on Twitter, I saw his tweet this morning about Netflix purchasing his imprint, Millarworld. As a comic fan this sent gears turning. I logged into the Millarworld forums and read his full post. He talked about how excited he was (of course!) and made big, yet vague, promises of things to come. This is probably going to come as a stream-of-consciousness type article, so sorry if I meander around the topic, but this is my takeaway after a day of mulling it over.
The stuff I’m excited about is that Millarworld is the home of a lot of original and interesting titles. We SHOULD be looking at miniseries and movies for sure, and maybe a full series for some titles. Not every title would work as a full series, as most of Millar’s work tends to run 6 issues or so, coming in spurts. This is partially due to the fact that he seriously mines comic artists and is willing to wait on them (like the notoriously erratic Frank Quietly). Millar writes few titles in an on-going basis. While it makes for great stories with an all-important third act, it makes on-going shows more difficult. That’s why I would lean more towards Netflix Original movies and miniseries, at least in the early days.
One big bonus is that Mark has been tying a lot of the titles together in a universe building project similar to what Marvel and DC have going on. So the opportunities for crossovers is wide. Mark explained the whole thing a while back over here.
Importantly, I did notice that Mark specifically excluded the Kingsman and Kick-Ass properties, as these already have established deals.
The thing that concerns me about it all though, is that last I checked, Netflix had mired itself in about $20 billion in debt producing original content. It seems like the deal has a bit of a grey cloud hanging over it. Can Netflix continue down this road? I’m sure the deal struck for Millarworld’s purchase was more than a couple million… I certainly hope that this doesn’t lead to the sell-off of IP to cover debts, essentially gutting Millarworld in the long run. Alas, without knowing the details of the deal, it’s impossible to say. However, I feel confident enough in Millar’s character after years of hearing stories about his personality from industry leading artists to believe he would never broker a deal that would fracture his stories and artists. Also, his wife probably wouldn’t let him. Anyways, I’ll throw out some of the more popular Millarworld titles for ya.
Here are a few of the titles that we can possibly expect to see in the coming years:
Reborn – with GREG CAPULLO
Empress – with STUART IMMONEN
Jupiter’s Legacy & Circle series – with Frank Quietly and Wilfredo Torres
Chrononauts – with Sean Gordon Murphy (Colorist Matt Hollingsworth (Preacher!) and letterer Chris Eliopoulos join Millar and Sean Murphy (Tokyo Ghost!!!) for the four-issue series. There were supposed to be two more series of this title, but nothing is announced yet.)
Hit-Girl – with John Romita Jr.
Starlight – with Goran Parlov
Superior – with Leinil Francis Yu (Last reports had a deal already in place at Fox, but maybe that fell through)
