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Picture it: you get a fancy-schmancy director to make a film about one of America's most beloved characters; it has a huge budget, impressive effects, big name talent, and... it totally sucks. Ang Lee's The Hulk immediately comes to mind, as does Bryan Singer's Superman. They were both critical and commercial failures, plus they were boring as all hell. But this summer, the Hulk franchise got a less sucky, more successful reboot. And that got Hollywood's wheels a'spinnin'. Could the same thing be done for The Man of Steel? It's complicated. Watch as we untangle the twisted tale after the jump.

Meet Mark Millar. He's the dude who wrote the comic that Wanted was based on (along with several other good books too!), and since Wanted has proven itself to be a box office success, he now has a little bit of street cred in this town. Well, his lifelong dream has been to make a Superman movie, and he may just use that cred to do so.

As Millar says in an interview with the Scottish newspaper, the Daily Record:

"Since I was a kid I've always wanted to reinvent Superman for the 21st century. I've been planning this my entire life. I've got my director and producer set up, and it'll be 2011. This is how far ahead you have to think. The Superman brand is toxic after that last movie lost $200 million, but in 2011 we're hoping to restart it. Sadly I can't say who the director is, but we may make it official by Christmas."

Whoa, slow down there, Mark. I thought Bryan Singer was talking about restarting the Superman franchise himself, and making it more action oriented/less-sucky. And if so, who's this director Millar is referring to? Naturally the geekier regions of the Internet were up in arms about this, so Millar decided to clarify in the comments section over at slashfilm.com.

Millar writes:

" That Superman news is interesting, isn't it? In the interests of clarity (because I'm sure this will be picked up somewhere) a very well known American action director heard about my love of Superman, approached me and asked me to team up with he and his producer to make a pitch for this. We've been talking for several weeks now and, if this is going to happen, we'll know by Christmas. He has huge pull at WB so fingers crossed. But this is nothing more than a huge US name pulling me into his fold and making me part of a package."

So, there you have it, folks. The Superman franchise may or may not be restarted and either Bryan Singer or Mark Millar or both or neither will be in charge of it. Glad we could clear that up for you, fanboys.