'The Magic Order': James Wan To Direct Mark Miller's Netflix Pilot

When famed comic book writer Mark Millar sold his Millarworld company to Netflix back in 2017, the plan was for him to develop new properties that could work as both comics and potential film or TV shows. The streaming service announced last year that several adaptations were coming soon, and now another adaptation is one step closer to reality.

James Wan (Aquaman, Saw) will direct the pilot episode of The Magic Order, based on an original comic that Millar wrote and Netflix published last year. This is exciting both because Wan rarely steps into the world of TV, and because the premise for this show is pretty damn great. Here's what we know so far.

Here's the description of the show:

Five families of magicians sworn to protect our world must battle an enemy who's picking them off one by one. By day they live among us as our neighbors, friends and co-workers, but by night they are the sorcerers, magicians and wizards that protect us from the forces of darkness — unless the darkness gets them first.

And here's a trailer for Millar's comic that was released last year, to give you a sense of the scale of this story:

Millar will executive produce this live-action adaptation of the comic alongside James Wan and Lindsey Beer, the latter of whom will write the script and serve as the showrunner. Beer is an up-and-coming writer whose only credit so far is on the Netflix series Sierra Burgess is a Loser, but she's become a go-to writer for big budget Hollywood projects. She's writing Chaos Walking, The Kingkiller Chronicle movie, a Fast & Furious spin-off, an "Amblin-esque re-imagination of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles," and films based on M.A.S.K., Silver Sable, and more. Plus, she's writing Netflix's Empress movie based on a different Mark Millar comic.

Wan, of course, is best known for his film work – he's only directed one episode of television over his entire career, and that was the network pilot of the MacGuyver reboot a few years ago. (He's also executive producing DC Universe's Swamp Thing, but he hasn't directed any of that show.) The fact that he's taking the time away from overseeing his Conjuring universe movies and working on future Aquaman-related properties (whether it's the sequel or the Trench spin-off) is good news for The Magic Order. Millar has always been fantastic at creating hooky premises, and I'm looking forward to seeing how Wan and Beer brings that magical world to life.