Cast your mind back to last year, and you might remember comic book writer Mark Millar discussing how he pitched his idea for a new trilogy of Superman movies to Warner Bros. Millar revealed at the time that he had a major Hollywood action director locked in to the project should Warner Bros hit the green light on it, but with the Superman cinematic franchise in limbo and little sign of it clambering out of it, Millar has finally revealed the name of the mystery director.

The man in question is Matthew Vaughn, not perhaps the most obvious name that springs to mind, who is currently in post-production on the movie of Millar's Kick-Ass. And it was he who approached Millar about the pitch, which the pair put to Warner Bros last year.

Millar told us last year that "I've had the plot for an amazing Superman trilogy figured out since I was about ten, so I told him that and he loved it. When we were in the States, we met up - he's an American director, and he's a big, big deal in terms of action movies and so on." You can find the interview here.

Vaughn is, last time we checked (which was a couple of minutes ago on IMDB, just to be on the safe side) a British director, but you can hardly blame Millar for throwing a red herring in there. He's also the man who helmed Layer Cake and Stardust, a fine pair of movies, and according to Times Online, he and Millar wanted to do a Superman film far removed from the five to date. That'd mean casting someone who didn't look like Christopher Reeve for starters. However, The Times quotes Millar as saying, "But Superman is still in stasis at the moment because the last one lost so much money and [Warner Bros] are scared to do anything with the character right now. I'm not holding my breath."

You can find the Times Online piece here, which also has some interesting material about what's going to happen to the rights to Superman in the US from 2013. No wonder Warner Bros isn't keen to fork out big bucks on a new film...