Until a couple of years ago, 20^th Century Fox hadn’t ventured too far from the core X-Men franchise, but they’ve now the huge potential of other comic book mutants. Even so, we were surprised by the news that James Franco will produce and star in a movie about James Madrox, aka Multiple Man.

Multiple Man appeared in no one’s favorite movie, X-Men: Last Stand, in which he was one of the mutants who joined Magneto in the fight against the X-Men.

During an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Franco confirmed that Multiple Man is in the early stages of production:

I don't know how much I can say. But I will say I am producing and performing in it. It's in the early stages. I think probably what I can say is, like anything, there's a need to develop more.

More interestingly, the actor teased that the movie would be rated R. He didn’t come right out and say it, but his implication was clear when he commented that Multiple Man will push into new ground and name-dropped Deadpool and Logan.

Our bottom line MO is how can we push this into new ground? A little bit, but still make it entertaining? [But] what I love about what Simon Kinberg and Fox and the X-Men people have done with Deadpool and Logan – it took a while to get there, maybe 10 years – but they are going to go hard R. And we're going to take this superhero thing, and really just push it into a new genre. So we're working with Simon Kinberg on an X-Men property.

We think this is great news! It may have had more ups than downs, but the core X-Men franchise has struggled to keep pace with its shared universes. On the other hand, Logan and Deadpool were massive hits, and New Mutants looks promising. These movies were all intended for more mature audiences, and we feel that Multiple Man would fit right in.