Joe Cornish To Direct Film Adaptation Of Mark Millar’s ‘Starlight’
by Erik Amaya
Attack the Block‘s Joe Cornish is entering Millarworld.
Deadline reports the director will both script and helm a feature adaptation of Mark Millar and Goran Parlov‘s Starlight for 20th Century Studios. The comic book centered on an old sci-fi adventurer whose tales of daring-do out in the galaxy fall on deaf ears when he returns to Earth. Having spent years being doubted and raising a family, his planned retirement goes sideways when his rocket ship returns to collect him for one last adventure.
Former X-Men film producer Simon Kinberg will produce alongside Audrey Chon and Nira Park.
Kinberg may be the reason the film is happening at 20th instead of Netflix, where all of Millar’s other projects are happening after the streaming service bought his Millarworld comic book company outright in 2017. Although, a film adaptation was previously in development at 20th in 2014 with Gary Whitta set to write. It is possible it held onto the rights all this time. Kinberg, meanwhile, was nearly the boss of the X-Men film universe before the 20th Century assets were sold to Disney and the Marvel Mutants were handed over to Marvel Studios. Kinberg’s sole directing effort in the X-Men land, Dark Phoenix, was not well-regarded. All that said, it is interesting to see 20th committing to a comic book-based project as Disney tried very hard to divest itself of anything unrelated to Marvel in the last few years.
The first results of the Millarworld deal, Jupiter’s Legacy, will launch on Netflix next month.
Cornish, meanwhile, has a cult following thanks to Attack the Block and his contributions as a writer to films like Ant-Man and The Adventures of Tin-Tin. He also directed the rarely seen The King Who Would Be King in 2019.
How quickly the film comes together is anyone’s guess. As seen with Jupiter’s Legacy, Millarworld projects can take years to surface.