Netflix scraps Jupiter’s Legacy S2 (sort of), orders Mark Millar’s Supercrooks live-action adaptation instead

I still haven’t seen Jupiter’s Legacy, Netflix’s superhero comic adaptation that was the spearhead of the gigantic development deal signed with prolific comic book creator Mark Millar’s Millarworld line of books. The reason for this viewing omission (besides not having a lot of free time) is that responses from people around me have been so mixed, running the full spectrum from trash fire to glorious. The majority of opinions appear to fall in the middle though of “not great but good enough to see where it’s going”. Except that won’t happen as Netflix is not bringing Jupiter’s Legacy back for another season. Sort of.

Deadline reports Millar and Netflix bumped heads regarding the approach for the second season and it didn’t look like these “creative differences” would be resolved any time soon. Not soon enough, at least, to get production on a second season going in a reasonable time frame, and thus, instead of keeping everybody hanging on a tether, Netflix has released the cast, led by Josh Duhamel and Leslie Bibb, from their contracts. So if you’re a fan of The Utopian, Lady Liberty, and the rest of their superpowered family and want more of their adventures, you’re out of luck. However, if you just like the world they inhabit, well there’s some good news.

Netflix will now essentially be turning Jupiter’s Legacy into an anthology series as the streamer has placed an order for a live-action adaptation of Supercrooks, Millar and artist Leinil Francis Yu’s villain-centric comic book series set in the same universe as Jupiter’s Legacy. Originally published in 2012 by Icon Comics three years before the release of Jupiter’s Legacy, Supercrooks follows “a ragtag gang of supervillains, con artists, petty thieves and leg-breakers who band together for the heist of the century and the most outrageous crime story you’ve ever seen in your life. Crime pays, and they’re going to prove it. Some people just want to have the time of their lives and make a little dirty money while they’re doing it. If the superheroes get in the way, they’re going to be spitting teeth.”

In a statement, Millar said that “Jupiter’s Legacy is a vast and rich space with lots of characters to mine, and so I’m happy to share that our next step here is a live-action version of the Supercrooks comic I created with Leinil Francis Yu a few years back.”

I’m really proud of what the team achieved with Jupiter’s Legacy and the amazing work everyone did on that origin season. I’ve been asked a lot about what we’re planning next with this world, and the answer is to see what the supervillains are getting up to. I’ve always loved crime stories, from Scorsese to Tarantino, and supervillains are always the most fun part of any superhero story. To do something exclusively focused on the villains they fight just feels incredibly fresh as we explore what it’s like to be a bad guy in a world crawling with good guys who want to put you in jail.

Continuing further, Millar said that while they’ve taken the “tough call of letting our incredible cast out of their show commitment”, this won’t be the end of Jupiter’s Legacy as “we’re confident we’ll return to it later”. There’s no word on when or how that would be though. What’s interesting though about pivoting to an anthology approach like this, is that Netflix is already developing an animated adaptation of Supercrooks which was announced when the streamer first acquired Millarworld. And from the sound of things, this other adaptation is still in the works. So will the live-action and animated versions be tackling different stories? We’ll have to wait and see how things play out.

Last Updated: June 3, 2021