#Mark Millar’s Nemesis Movie Gets Promising Young Woman Director to Write the Script

The Nemesis movie is moving forward with Promising Young Woman filmmaker Emerald Fennell. Comic book writer Mark Millar, who created and wrote the Nemesis comic book series for Marvel Comics, has announced that Fennell wrote the latest screenplay for the long-gestating project. It’s not clear if Fennell is also intended to direct, and no director is officially attached to the movie at this time.

“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,” Millar told the UK retailer Forbidden Planet, via Flickering Myth. “Especially after the initial development of the movie by the late Tony Scott, who established some amazing visual ideas for the movie.”

Nemesis is written by Mark Millar with artwork by Steve McNiven. The six-issue series explored essentially consists of this concept: “What if Batman was the Joker?” It follows Matt Anderson, an incredibly violent and dangerous vigilante who massacres people by the thousands in his pursuit of Chief Inspector Blake Morrow – whom he blames for the death of his father. Like Bruce Wayne, Matt is not a superpowered individual, but instead uses the billions of dollars inherited from his deceased parents to carry out his crimes.

A synopsis for the comic book series reads: “Nemesis is a tale of one man with a plan for vengeance! Who is Nemesis? He is a son of privilege, an inheritor of billions from his deceased parents. He owns a fleet of the finest cars and a hangar full of planes, and has countless technological gadgets at his command. He’s the ultimate supervillain fighting relentlessly for a nihilistic cause in which he believes.”

There have been efforts to make a Nemesis movie for many years. At one point, Top Gun helmer Tony Scott was attached to direct before his death in 2012. Joe Carnahan and brother Matthew Carnahan later wrote a draft of the script with Joe intended to direct. It was announced in 2015 that Warner Bros. would adapt the movie, but updates on its progress have been stagnant since. It’s unclear how much, if anything, from the Carnahans’ script has directly carried over into Fennell’s screenplay.

This is not the first comic book adaptation that’s on the way from Fennell following her Oscar-winning work on Promising Young Woman, which brought her the win for Best Original Screenplay. In March, it was also announced that she would be writing a Zatanna script to be set in the DCEU for Warner Bros. and DC Films. That project has also not yet chosen a director, but Fennell seemed interested in the idea in an April interview with Variety.

“It’s so exciting. That’s not a conversation that’s happened at all, so I have no insight, and also, we’re still in the early days,” Fennell said. “It’s something that we’ve been working on for a while. I’ve been speaking to Bad Robot [Productions], who are amazing. You want to get the first bit right, which is the script, before you think of anything else.”

She added: “It’s a very specific thing – the world of superhero movies is incredibly exciting, but it’s also a new different challenge. The main thing for me is making sure that it’s really, really good. I’m such a genre fan. I’m a fan of witchcraft, magic, and comic books, and this is scary and intense.”

Both Zatanna and Nemesis have yet to be given official release dates, but with screenplays coming from an Oscar-winning screenwriter, hopefully both of these long-awaited projects will finally make some traction. This news comes to us from FlickeringMyth.

Topics: Nemesis