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Fox Denies Mark Millar Was Offered X-Men 4 (UPDATE)

As previously reported by Bleeding Cool in the "Is Mark Millar The Boy Who Cried Wolverine" article, Mark Millar announced to his throng that he had been offered the writing role on the movie X-Men 4 by a Fox executive, but had decided to turn it down in favour of his own movie projects.

LatinoReview source Pincho Taco and Millar hater tried to scotch this.

This is of course bullshit.  Bryan Singer is supervising the project and he doesn't even know who Mark Millar is.  When the writer is announced you will see it is someone very close to Singer.  It was never Millar.

Mark Millar then retaliated saying;

What's nice is that we'll announce what we're doing in the next couple of months and the exec at Fox who invited me to write X-Men, can easily confirm.

I'm going to talk to Fox about X4 when I edit Wizard in July so we can cover that and the other stuff then too

Which should make an interesting article. Because I've spoken by phone and e-mail to those who Mark Millar spoke to at Fox – and they claim that yes, they did speak to him. And that while they conducted a conversation at a high level concerning the X-Men characters and the X-Universe that Fox is mapping out with future films, Mark was not offered a role. Well not yet anyway. They also say that there is no X-Men 4 project being worked on right now – which is also why he was not offered the job of writing on it. And that Jamie Moss is lined up to write the next project, X-Men: First Class.

However, the Fox people told me that they really do want to work with Mark in the future.

So, yes according to Fox, Mark Millar got it wrong – but Pincho Taco is wrong too. No one is working on X-Men 4 right now. And that's from the top.

Unless of course, that isn't true.

What else… oh yes. Tracking.

Bleeding Cool also recently ran a piece on Kick-Ass tracking, the measurement of public opinion regarding upcoming movies and the likeliness that they will see a movie on release. Studios may a great deal of attention to these figures, so that they can amend marketing plans, prepare for the expected size of release and basically measure the impact the movie may have.

And yes, that Pinche Taco said, regarding the Kick-Ass tracking;

Kick-Ass is tracking extremely poorly among the regular movie going audience which doesn't want to see a little girl killing random dudes

While Mark Millar in response stated;

Kick-Ass tracking badly? It's tracking massive.

Well, this is one field I can at least provide some figures. And the conclusion? They're both wrong. Kick Ass is tracking… all right-ish. It's slumping in the older female audience, which have a greater tendency to decide the destination of a "couples" trip to the cinema. The advertising reach isn't as high as it could be at this point. But those who have heard of the movie, really do want to see it. It probably should be doing better, but these are the kind of figures that can help studios ensure it does do better. Upping an emphasis on Hit Girl and Mark Strong's mob boss character would be my recommendation, and pushing into female-friendly media spots.

But then what do I know?

Anyway, this was Kick Ass tracking for three weeks ahead of screening.

UPDATE- We received this letter;

There's a jump in awareness, but no increased desire to see the film than before. Indeed, some have been turned off. And it's shedding that older female audience. But tracking extremely poorly? No. There's a decent enoiugh chunk of "definite interest" right now. But tracking massively? Also no. But here are some comparative films for other released-and-soon-to-be-released movie, two weeks away from their screening date.

Conclusion? Kick Ass is doing well, and at least level pegging against much bigger films at this stage. But more people need to know about this film. There does need to be a widenening of demographic appeal. And if more people are advertised to successfully, it should do very well indeed.

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