Somehow, I entirely missed this at the end of last week, but Mark Millar has formed his own television and movie production company, and as is usual with everyone’s favorite analog creator (As in, one who creates analogs, not one who doesn’t work digitally), he’s aiming high:
It would be easy for me to take off and just set up base in Los Angeles. But I feel passionately about doing [in Scotland] what the director Peter Jackson achieved in New Zealand. He’s as far away from Hollywood as we are but proved geography was no barrier by creating one of the biggest movie franchises of all time with Lord Of The Rings. The scenery is stunning but we can more than match that. Over the next five years in Scotland I want to do the same here.
The first project the company is working on is American Jesus, AKA Chosen, but he also promises some brand new ideas for television down the line:
I just want to make TV shows that I actually want to watch. I can’t stand all the low-end reality shows. I know a lot of the guys making those programmes and they hate them as much as I do. I just want to do real quality here and that can be high-end documentaries or brand new formats as much as quality dramas like The Sopranos or Mad Men. I know the stations’ hands are tied because there isn’t a lot of money around and so in the long-term I’d like to arrange co-productions with American companies and try to get things rolling again. The studios trust me as long as my movies make money and as long as I don’t drop the ball they’re happy to invest.
No mention in the story about Miracle Park, surprisingly; you’d think that with its Scottish setting and Millar’s writing and directing the project it would’ve at least rated some kind of comment. Whatever happened to that movie? Did I miss some announcement or something?
November 1st, 2011 at 4:00 pm
It’s not just about “scenery”, in New Zealand it also is advantageous because of tax breaks and non-union productions that keep production costs low. I trust Millar looked into all of that and isn’t naive enough to believe it has to do with scenery. That or he’s really slick and avoiding these issues.