Mark Millar’s American Jesus & Supercrooks picked up by Waypoint Entertainment

Waypoint Entertainment has acquired the rights to two Mark Millar (Wanted, Kick-Ass, Kingsman: The Secret Service) properties, American Jesus and Supercrooks. Waypoint Entertainment’s Ken Kao (The Nice Guys), will produce with partner Dan Kao and Addictive Pictures’ Russell Ackerman (Mama) and John Schoenfelder under their first-look deal.

American Jesus was drawn by artist Peter Gross and follows a modern twelve-year-old boy who realizes he is the second coming of Jesus Christ who has returned to Earth in the present day in a final effort to save mankind. With illustrations by Leinil Francis Yu, Supercrooks is a cool, funny heist story about eight super-villains forced out of retirement in an attempt to rob the world’s most notorious crime boss.

The prolific Millar is a highly regarded and successful comic book writer, whose work includes Captain America: Civil War, and The Ultimates, inspiring much of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Several of his original works, Kingsman: The Secret Service, Wanted, and Kick-Ass have all been adapted into successful feature films and franchises, and other recent hit series such as Superior, Chrononauts, Empress, Huck, MPH, and Starlight are already in development for film or television. Millar is represented by lawyer Harris M. Miller II and agent Martin Spencer at Paradigm.

Millar said “I only come to LA one week a year and do all my meetings in the pub during those seven days every September. On my most recent trip I met these guys and was wowed by their plans and the scale they’re working on. Leinil and I couldn’t be more delighted to have Supercrooks up and running with such talented people. Peter Gross and I have held American Jesus back for a decade until the right team came along. This really is that team! The level of talent we’re talking about behind the camera has us all ridiculously excited. Fans of the books are in for an absolute treat.”

Waypoint Entertainment is a film and television development, production, and finance company which recently announced Scott Cooper’s Hostiles starring Christian Bale and Rosamund Pike and Martin Zandvliet’s The Outsider starring Jared Leto. Waypoint is in post-production on Shane Black’s detective thriller The Nice Guys starring Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling which Warner Bros. will release on May 20; Gus Van Sant’s The Sea of Trees starring Matthew McConaughey, Ken Watanabe, and Naomi Watts; and Terrence Malick’s Weightless starring Ryan Gosling Michael Fassbender, Natalie Portman, Cate Blanchett, and Rooney Mara.

Addictive Pictures is a film and television production company with a specialty in elevated genre films. Addictive is currently prepping Jeremy Saulnier’s next film Hold the Dark for A24, and recently closed a deal for Deeper written by Max Landis starring Bradley Cooper at MGM.