Oh, man. It's so good to finally be able to talk about this:

The man who shot Maverick in Top Gun, Bruce in the Last Boy Scout, yelled action for Will Smith in Enemy of the State, directed Denzel in Man on Fire (one of the finest revenge movies ever made), had Tarantino rework Hackman's dialogue in Crimson Tide and gave me Deneuve's naughtiest performance in The Hunger is directing our movie. Oh, AND he did True Romance, for my money the best of all the Tarantino flicks. Tony Scott: I can't even pretend to be cool about this.

Bryan Hitch and I would reference Tony on a weekly basis when we were doing The Ultimates. Our dream was an Ultimates movie with Scott directing because he can do the character work and the intensity, but also handle scale and action like practically no other. The idea of a him helming a superhero movie had us giddy and here he is directing the one Steve McNiven and I created. We found out last Friday night and managed to keep a secret from all but a few of our closest friends and family. But this is the call I had a couple of weeks back, which I described as the most exciting of my career; Tony on the blower chatting about how he wanted to shoot certain scenes if we gave him the rights. He was buzzing about it, describing Steve as the best comic book artist he's seen in over twenty years. We talked casting, we talked budget (and we're talking way more than Wanted and Kick-Ass put together here in terms of money for him to play with) and we talked with Fox about making this into a major franchise, something they're really going to invest their time and energy into.

As you can imagine, I'm more than excited. Steve is delirious and this puts our books instantly in an entirely different league in Hollywood terms. Tony said this was a very timely project and Fox want to get this moving as soon as possible. Next up is a script and the writer we talked about did one of my top five movies of all time. The actor he's shooting for as the lead character is going to blow your socks off.

I'm happy and Steve's happy. This has been the most exciting week you can imagine and we're enormously appreciative of all the people who have been waiting around for the twenty-four hours we've been waiting for the news to go live. It's incredibly affirming to have people so into the work that they care enough and apologies for the delay in getting this out there, but we hope you agree this is awesome news.

Very best wishes,
MM