Phil Miller and William Tinning

HE conquered the world of comic books, and then the box office with his story for the hit movie Wanted.

Now Scotland's newest blockbuster writer, Mark Millar, has attracted the cream of Hollywood to his latest project, a movie called Kick-Ass.

Adapted from his own comic book, Kick-Ass is to star Nicolas Cage and will be co-produced by Millar, Hollywood actor Brad Pitt and Matthew Vaughn - who is married to German model and actress Claudia Schiffer.

With a £65m budget, and with Cage being joined in the cast by Aaron Johnson and Lyndsy Fonseca, the film seems set to be as successful as Wanted, which starred James McAvoy, and was based on Millar's comic books of the same name.

Millar, 38, originally from Coatbridge, Lanarkshire, but whose home is now in Glasgow where he lives with his wife Gillian, and daughter Emily, 10, has had remarkable success as a comic book writer, becoming one of the most successful scribes in the business.

Wanted made more than $300m at the worldwide box office including about £10m at the UK box office.

Last night Millar told The Herald: "I am really excited about the deal and the fact that the rights for the film were signed before the book is published in January.

"The most important thing for me was the adaptation being in the spirit of the book."

Millar went on: "We probably did the most violent film this year with Wanted. I wanted to do something even more outrageous with Kick-Ass.

"The book is very extreme. There is a lot of violence in it. That would have put a lot of producers off. Matthew Vaughn has assured me they will do a page-by-page adaptation of the book.

"To get the level of talent attached to something that is so controversial is really exciting." Kick-Ass is due to be shot in London and Toronto.

Its plot follows high school misfit Dave Lizewski who decides to become a superhero even though he has little athletic ability and poor co-ordination.

Millar added: "I grew up with Clint Eastwood movies. I think a lot of films these days are too tame. Everything is designed for lunchboxes and toys.

"I thought it would be good to do something that appeared to the slightly older market, even though Kick-Ass is a super-hero movie.

"Spiderman and Superman took about 40 years to make into films. Shooting for Kick-Ass will begin a week on Saturday and will last for nine weeks. The book will be published in January and the film will be out next summer. It has worked out really well."

In the movie version, Johnson, who has recently starred in Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging, will play the main character, and Fonseca - known for her work as Dylan Mayfair in Desperate Housewives - the object of his desire.

Cage will be a "red neck superhero" who wants to bring down a major villain, who is a drug lord.

Millar has been known to inject controversy into the world of the superhero, once publishing a comic in which Superman was a Communist and the first (openly) gay superhero in the comic book The Authority. However, the writer recently told The Herald that he will stop writing comic books when he reaches 45 years of age.

"I'm really conscious that pop writing is something people don't tend to be very good at the other side of 45," he said. "You can write your Martin Amis-y novels and all that kind of thing, but superheroes, big-budget explosions, buildings coming down - it's a young man's game.

"It's like pop music. There's nothing worse than seeing reunion bands pushing the belly into leather trousers. I don't want to be that guy."