Mark Millar Gives Update On Nemesis Movie Script From Emerald Fennell

Mark Millar’s “Millarworld” franchise is exploding onto both the big and small screens, and now we learn that his long-awaited Nemesis movie has had the latest version of its script turned in. Warner Bros tapped Emerald Fennell – who is fresh off an Oscar win for her film Promising Young Woman – to write the script for Nemesis, and Millar has an update on where things stand. Now that Promising Young Woman is an Oscar-winning film, it’s sure to raise Nemesis’ profile with mainstream audiences – as well as a lot of eyebrows. Promising Young Woman was one of the most buzzworthy pictures in 2021 awards season and showcased just what a unique talent Fennell is.

Mark Millar was doing an interview with Forbidden Planet’s new online TV show, when he said the following about Emerald Fennell‘s script for Nemesis:

“Emerald Fennell, who just won an Oscar for best screenplay for Promising Young Woman, has just delivered the latest draft of the Nemesis screenplay, which is extremely cool, especially after the initial development of the movie by the late Tony Scott, who established some amazing visual ideas for the movie!”

Nemesis is Mark Millar and artist Steve McNiven’s twisted take on the Batman mythos. Instead of Bruce Wayne suffering tragedy and becoming Batman, Millar’s wealthy protagonist instead uses his resources and training to become something more akin to The Joker. The film adaptation has been lingered at 20th Century Fox throughout the 2010s, with Tony Scott and Joe Carnahan both being attached to it at different points. After production hopes stalled out, Nemesis was acquired by Warner Bros. in 2015.

Last Fall, we heard that Project Power directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman were attached to helm Nemesis, and that the premise would be somewhat different than what fans remember from the comic (according to Collider): “A genius engineer who witnesses the President of the United States commit a deadly crime and teams up with a vigilante to take down the President and his corrupt government.”

That’s a much more pointed story than Millar’s chronicle of a Nemesis using brutal terrorism and mass murder to make the life of a police Chief Inspector a living hell. It also seems to ignore the ending of Nemesis, which hinted that a much bigger organization was at work, one that trains bored rich people to be supervillains.

Millar’s Millarworld is based at Netflix, but certain movie right are still in possession of studios like 20th Century Studios (Kingsman) and Warner Bros.(Nemesis). Millar acknowledged as much previously, saying WB will be doing their own thing with this film adaptation:

“Weirdly, this is my Nemesis book, still at WB for the next few years. I’m at Netflix & not involved, but they seem to be doing very much their own thing with it. Pleased to hear @emeraldfennell on the screenplay. She’s great! Nemesis, like the rest of the Millarworld IPs, owned by Netflix, of course, but Nemesis & one or two others still have the movie rights out there at other studios for the time being.”

We’ll keep you updated on when Nemesis goes into production.