“Family friendly” and “Mark Millar” are not normally used in the same sentence.
Even so, it appears that 20th Century Fox is planning to give it a shot with “Kindergarten Heroes,” a new movie that Carter Blanchard just signed on to write with Simon Kinberg producing. The book does not appear to actually exist yet, and the only artwork I could find for it online is what looks like the front of a book, but I can’t find any listing anywhere that would indicate that you actually buy that book.
Selling unpublished material before it hits the stand is nothing new for Millar. I thought it was very interesting when I was on the set of “Kick-Ass” and some of the issues existed only as rough artwork and some story notes. Matthew Vaughn and Jane Goldman’s script actually fed back into the way Millar was thinking, and that cross-traffic is one of the things that made that so much fun for all involved.
As a producer, Kinberg is a busy man these days. He’s one of the guys in the mix for the new wave of “Star Wars” films that will kick off with “Episode VII,” presumably arriving in theaters in December of 2015. He just produced “Elysium,” and he’s right there in the midst of things for “X-Men: Days Of Future Past” as well.
I’m sure Fox would love for “Kindergarten Heroes” to become a perennial family franchise. They genuinely love the family market, and if there’s even the slightest chance they can make something for a family market, they will. Even when I was working there, the execs who worked on the family movies were the ones who had the most power.
Blanchard is a busy guy right now in his own right. His script “Glimmer” is set up at DreamWorks, and it’s a solid read that could be something groovy in the right director’s hands. He’s the last writer on “Spy Hunter,” which now looks like it could be a Ruben Fleischer film. And his pitch for “Kindergarten Heroes” was enough to convince Fox that he’s the man with the plan on this one.
This is the sort of thing that could either come together quickly as an actual movie or end up languishing in some development hell if no one can agree on what movie they’re actually making. It’s hard to tell at this point. Millar is certainly part of the Fox family at this point, and I guess we’ll see how much of a priority they make this as they move forward.