By the iron rules of Hollywood, you knew this was coming. Back in 2006, 300 raked in close to half a billion dollars at the box office, so a sequel of some kind was inevitable. However, director Zack Snyder has always said a sequel was out of the question unless Frank Miller was on board, and Miller has been busy with other projects — ruining The Spirit, getting kicked off (or walking off) of Buck Rogers, stuff like that. But now it appears that Frank is ready. Miller revealed some time ago that he’d written a first draft of the script, and now we know a little more about the project. It will be that much-dreaded creature, a prequel:

It’s the battle of Marathon through my lens. I’ve finished the plot and I getting started on the artwork. Every generation returns to ancient Greece because, well, the stories are so damn good. The fact and the myth are inseparable and, believe me, when you go sailing for a while in the Aegean Sea, you start believing in Poseidon.

The story will be called Xerxes, which doesn’t sound promising. Marathon was fought ten years before the battle of Thermopylae, when Xerxes’ father Darius was emperor. Darius himself was home in Persepolis at the time, and his son Xerxes (who would have been about 30) was nowhere near Greece. So the story will probably be wildly entertaining, but only vaguely historical — in other words, a lot like 300. Still, it would be interesting to hear the back story on Xerxes, and learn how he morphed from a normal young Persian noble into an eight-foot-tall cabana boy. All the same, the first time midi-chlorians enter the discussion I’m outta the theatre.