Report: Olivia Cooke To Star in The Magic Order for Netflix

The Magic Order, one of a number of Mark Millar-created projects in developent for live-action, is close to nailing down Olivia Cooke (Ready Player One) for a lead role. The theory is that she would likely play Cordelia Moonstone, a hard-drinking, punkish young woman who is the illegitimate child of Leonard Moonstone, a member of the Magic Order and one of the series’ major characters. The Magic Order has already had a six-issue comic book miniseries published with Millar and artist Olivier Coipel, but the show isn’t exactly a “comic book adaptation. It is one of a number of projects developed as part of Millar’s overall deal with Netflix.

The series follows five families of magicians, who have been secretly protecting the world from unseen threats. While the families normally blend in in everyday society, their lives are changed forever when a new enemy tries to assassinate them. Millar, who wrote the comics that Wanted, Kingsman, and Captain America: Civil War were based on, has been working with the streaming giant to create its own native series of valuable IP. The idea is that it makes Netflix less vulnerable to having some of their most popular content vanish when its owner decides to open a competing streaming app.

Here’s how The Illuminerdi, who broke the story, describes the character: “A misanthropic drunk with a punk-like aesthetic and a perchance for dangerous stunts, Cordelia is described as being ‘more dangerous than her father realizes.’”

“Now that Millarworld is owned by Netflix the possibilities are off the scale.” Millar told ComicBook.com last year. “In publishing terms, we’re being smart and staying at my exact current output, which is around 20 monthly comics a year or four graphic novel collections. This means we can really focus on promoting each book and use Netflix’s massive international machine. Their presence is just ridiculous. We’re announcing a new book this weekend and it almost feels like we’re announcing a movie. The amount of thought and the number of people behind this is unlike anything I’ve experienced in over 20 years as a comic-book creator.”

“Again, this is next-level stuff and our plan is to have a range of books backed up by this incredible PR machine backed up by this amazing resource, which is the highest quality movies and TV shows we can do.” Millar continued. “But publishing is just a part of what Millarworld is doing at Netflix, the idea being that I’m just constantly creating new stories and these are being exploited in lots of different mediums, as we’ll explain over the coming months.”