Nemesis Film Rights Might Revert to Netflix Soon According to Mark Millarz

Mark Millar claims that his Nemesis film rights will soon revert back to Netflix. Millar was on Twitter and interacted with a fan’s question: “does Netflix have the rights to nemesis/nemesis reloaded?” In his answer, Millar said the following: “Netflix owns the franchise in full forever, but the film rights currently with WB for another year or so.”

What Is Nemesis? 

Nemesis is Mark Millar and artist Steve McNiven’s 2010twisted take on Batman. Instead of Bruce Wayne suffering a deep tragedy and becoming Batman, Millar’s wealthy protagonist instead responds to his emotional losses by using his resources and training to become a psychotic terrorist, a la The Joker. 

A Nemesis movie has been in development limbo for a decade now 20th Century Fox throughout the 2010s, with Tony Scott (Top Gun) and Joe Carnahan (The A-Team) both being attached to it at different points. After production hopes stalled out, the Nemesis film rights were acquired by Warner Bros. in 2015, where they have sat ever since. It was 2021 when we last heard the update that Promising Young Woman filmmaker Emerald Fennell was coming onboard to write the script. Since then, there’s been mostly radio silence on what is happening with the Nemesis film. 

When it was in more active development, rumors about what the Nemesis movie was doing with its story seemed pretty wild. One such version of the script was set to follow: “A genius engineer who witnesses the President of the United States commit a deadly crime and teams up with a vigilante (Nemesis) to take down the President and his corrupt government.” 

That was an explicitly Hollywood-sized version of the Nemesis comic book story, which followed the titular Batman/Joker hybrid character as he terrorized his version of Commissioner Gordon with a string of crimes. The sequel miniseries Nemesis: Reloaded was launched at the start of 2023; that series has deepened both the mystery and mayhem of the series, with Nemesis putting a bounty out to kill off the city’s police force, cop by cop, even as we learn the dark, twisted, origin of Nemesis – including the person that is the true target of his wild killing spree.

Other bits of the lore have hinted that Nemesis’s creation might have been an orchestrated event, headed by an organization that converts broken rich/influential people into supervillains. Whether the property is looked at as a small-scale adult-themed indie comic adaptation, or the springboard to a blockbuster-sized film or series, there’s enough lore to make it work. We’ll keep you updated. 

Nemesis is still sitting in development limbo.